Bastille Day
by Beloved-Stranger
Summary: S3, Year of the Deal. The boys visit a friend, try to relax and take time to recoup. However, Sam's dreams are back, and Dean finds a tape in the stuff from John's lockup...the contents of which will change everything forever... 3rd Clothesline fic
1. Begin Again

**Disclaimer:** I don't own SPN. Things would be very different if I did, let me tell you.

**Author's Rant:** Okay, so, if you're reading this, then logically you should have read 'A Hollywood Hazing' and 'Care Packages' as well. If you havn't you may be a little confused... Anywho, this all takes place in Season 3, the Year of the Deal, after the boys have done their stint in Elizabethtown and Dean's brain is on fire with the crazy that went down there, and the things Casey told him. It really is time they took a break...

**

* * *

One: Begin Again**

_He stands in grasslands; narrow, dull yellow leaves, half-broken in some absent wind that reach his knees. It must be night, because he can barely see further than six feet in any direction, though there are no stars overhead, only the endless, unrelieved blackness._

_He can hear nothing save his own breathing, feel nothing save his curling hands and the earth, so very solid beneath his bare feet._

_Then out of the dark, there is the rush and hiss of shifting grass…but no discernable footsteps._

_He tenses, braces himself for a fight, though he has no idea what's coming and no way to defend himself against it save the strength of his limbs._

_A shape looms slowly out of the black and he knows there is no defending against something of that size._

_Slowly, so slowly, he begins to make out the half-familiar form; the lines, the arcs and curves of it._

_Out of the velvet black night walks the white elephant._

_In truth, it's an African, with ears like blankets held out from the broad head. But its skin is like old white leather, spotted and freckled the way silver does as it tarnishes. The tusks that preclude it as it sways toward him, great footsteps near silent, are glowing pearl._

_When it stands before him, not three feet away, he sees the eyes – intelligent, familiar eyes; not the usual elephantine amber, but deep, rich blue._

_He frowns, reaches out._

"_I know you," he says._

_The elephant bows its head, and as his hand meets warm flesh, he looks up, and sees the beginning of the word written in wide black brushstrokes down its spine._

_The elephant regards him, gaze as blue as any sky. The whisper against his ear is its voice._

"_This is where it began –"_

_Lightning flares in one magnesium-bright instant, lighting the grasslands around them. Sam sees the familiar gravestones and knows where he is._

"– _and this is where it will end."_

Sam wakes in the polluted dark of the motel room, his brother still sleeping in the bed next to his own. The air still smells of dry grass, and when he blinks, the reverse silhouette of the elephant burns in his mind's eye.

He hasn't dreamt like that since they opened the Devil's Gate…

…and yet if Dean asks in the morning, Sam will smile and shrug and say nothing at all.

* * *

In the end, it's Dean's decision to take Peggy up on her open-door policy.

Sam arrives back in their motel room with food in hand to find Dean sitting on his bed, a little less hunch to his shoulders than there has been in recent days, talking on his cell and smiling, which is rather novel too. For a week after Elizabethville Dean was…not brooding exactly, but troubled, and Sam worries more and more about what went on between him and Casey while they were stuck together in that basement.

Demons lie, Sam knows, but sometimes they do it by omission.

Something she said, or did, has stuck with Dean, leaving him mentally scrabbling like a bear with a burr on its back that it can't reach.

It's making both of them twitchy.

"Who?" Sam mouths, setting down the food on the table.

Dean glances up at him, still smiling, and mouths back, "Peggy."

Sam frowns. This is new. In the – what is it now? – almost four months they've known Peggy, Dean has never been the one to call her. It's always Peggy calling them or Sam calling Peggy and hitting 'speaker-phone' so she can talk to both of them while Dean drives, or eats, or spring-cleans the arsenal that lives under the floor of the Impala's trunk.

There isn't anything mean-spirited in it, just that Dean doesn't really think in terms of social calls; you call someone for information, or help, or to check up on them…or, more often than not with Dean, to seduce them.

Sam really hopes this isn't the latter…

"Alright…yeah…" His brother glances at him again. "Yeah…see you in a week, Peg."

_Wait…what?_

Dean calmly hangs up and looks over at Sam, who is still standing beside the table and now staring at his brother with his eyebrows steadily climbing his face.

"We're going to LA," Dean says, then watches him closely, as though waiting for a reaction.

"Uh, okay. Not that I'm not happy to be going to see Peggy, but why now?"

Dean shrugs. "She invited us."

"Well, great, but we've been invited before…"

"This time we're not on a job, or too far away," Dean says, shrugging again as he makes a beeline for the food.

Sam snorts. 'Not too far away'…conveniently ignoring the fact that there's most of the country between them and Cali. It really will take them the better part of a week to get there, unless Dean plans to floor it the whole way, which isn't really feasible.

"Besides," his brother continues through a mouthful of carry-away lamb roast, "by the time we get there it'll be July Fourteenth."

Sam frowns. "What's on July Fourteenth?"

"Hell if I know. Peggy just asked that we be there by then if we decided to come." He grins. "Well, demanded, really, but its not like she's in the immediate vicinity threatening to stab me with a fork…again."

Its a memory Sam treasures.

"Yeah…" Sam steels himself. "Look…really, it'd be great to see her again…" It really would, "but, Dean…there are still things we can do, things we need to look into. The Deal –"

Dean's hand comes down on the table.

It isn't loud, or violent, or anything like that, but its a sharp movement, and it does what it was designed to do and gets Sam's attention.

So does Dean's expression.

"A week, Sam," he says, gaze steady. "That's all I'm asking for here. A week, maybe two. We've been running ragged for almost two months here and…downtime okay? We could both do with some. A week to get there, another to chill out, drink some beer, eat food that wasn't put together on an assembly line. You and Peggy can get together and do your little book club thing…"

Sam flushes. He and Peggy have been emailing each other drafts of each other's work almost since they met. He thought he was being subtle; never showing his or her work to Dean, or leaving his writing notes out where Dean could find them.

Dean wasn't even awake when Sam unwrapped Peggy's early/late birthday present to him; a handsome journal bound in dark green leather, for him to write in when he needed to feel paper under his fingers. When the words where burning him up too fast and the laptop was too slow waking up.

Evidently he hasn't been subtle enough. _Crap…_

Dean's smiling now.

"Two weeks, Sam," he murmurs. "The Deal can wait two goddamned weeks."

Sam swallows, eyes ducking to the floor, and nods.

Two weeks…they can swing that…

* * *

**Author's Latter Rant:** I feel that break coming on.


	2. Where Shall We Three Meet

**Author's Rant:** This chapter always felt annoyingly awkward to me. Whatever.

**

* * *

Two: Where Shall We Three Meet…**

They arrive on the twelfth, right on time, well ready to stop, and to stay for a little while.

He'll see her again for the first time in months, and silently, he's a little scared. Over the length and breadth of the country, down phone lines and hidden email accounts, through the books she sends and the stories he tells, they've become friends.

"_Ever wake up at three-thirty in the morning wondering why, and then realize to have to get the words down; you have to write something, anything, before you lose them?"_

But the last time he saw her, outside the gates of the studio with the blunt sunlight in her hair and a ready smile on her face, in her eyes…the last time he saw her he said farewell with a kiss, and now he's not sure what to do.

She's never mentioned it, and in deference, neither has he. Dean probably saw it at the time – the car wasn't that far away – and he hasn't said anything either…although he gets a look on his face that Sam dreads whenever visiting her is mentioned. They've never stayed in contact with someone they met on a job, not even the people they like, and yet…and yet.

As Dean leads the way up the stairs to her new apartment, Sam is silent, remembering the first time he laid eyes on her.

"_And sometimes when you see something – the way an animal moves, or a city on a horizon, or how a person smiles – you think of ten different ways to describe it. Ways to make it so that someone else could read what you'd write and see what you saw."_

She had burst into the trailer they'd been hiding out in, watching the last moments of her boss as he plunged to his death through the ceiling of his own movie set. Quite rightly horrified, she'd turned them out…and then, to their surprise, figured out what they were doing. (And though he never says it, sometimes Sam wonders how she made the leap; how did a down to earth girl see a phantom woman on a daily and realize it _really was_ a phantom? How did she accept something like that so quickly…?)

Then when the ghosts came after her, when the spirit of Lola Wolfe held her under the surface of a bath of stage blood…it was Sam who got there first, Sam who pulled her out, Sam who forced the fluid from her lungs and breathed the life back into her.

"_You love words. You love the way you can piece them together and shape new things with them. You love finding new ways to do it, too. Sometimes you'll read something – something wonderful – and it'll take you're breath away."_

He held her hand in the ambulance on the way to the hospital, and again in the ER when the nightmares kept her from sleep.

She wrote her email address on the same arm as he was leaving, and told him you can't send first drafts via text message.

"_Welcome to my world."_

The apartment is empty with a note on the door and a key hidden in the cracked wooden lintel.

As the step over the threshold, greet the cat and settle their bags, something catches Sam's eye.

On the west wall, bathed in the rich sunlight they missed last time they were in LA, is a painting. One huge canvas, covered in brightly coloured handprints. They touch and overlap, linking painted fingers, pressed multi-hued palms.

The very centre of the canvas is bare, the colours circling a single print in deep blue where it sits like the eye of a storm. Unlike the others, there is no name attached to it, though Sam knows whose it is.

_Peggy…_

"Hey," says Dean, coming up beside him.

He squints and points to the white hollow of her palm print where the others have painted names.

"Doesn't that look like a white elephant to you?"

The air freezes in Sam's lungs.

* * *

She spends the morning baking happily in the sun, on the one patch of grass in the jungle of the rooftop garden. Basking on the uncut grass, the sun catches in the newly cropped spill of her hair and the tattoo that coils down the side of her left thigh from beneath the leg of her shorts.

Beyond the small, tangled trees she can't see the city sprawling around her, only hear it; traffic, voices, all so distant here in the undergrowth. Around her, drifting on the lightest of breezes are the scents of the young frangipani, the sun-block on her skin and oranges ripening on the little gnarled citrus trees beside her.

And then somewhere, there are voices…

She rises, fighting her way swearing and laughing through the small trees and bushes, vines and flowers. She emerges, stepping back into the sunlight.

And there they are, the Brother's Grimm, those green-eyed boys…

Her heroes.

The two of them pause for a moment, unsure, perhaps, of their welcome.

Then she smiles and steps forward, "What, I don't see you for months and I don't rate a hug?"

Dean's mouth tugs up – that little boy grin – and catches her up. So far from her brothers, a strange girl in a strange country, Dean's hug is like a homecoming. He lifts her off her feet, swings her.

"Good to see you, Peg," a half-laugh at her shoulder.

…and then there's Sam.

_Oh boy._

She steps away from Dean, and he reaches out one big hand, gently tugs one curl away from her face. She can feel herself blushing.

"You cut it."

She shrugs and smiles again. "Yeah. It was just…easier, y'know…"

There's very nearly a pause, only Sam's mouth quirks and he says, "What, I don't rate a hug, too?"

She laughs once and reaches up as he reaches down.

_This is home. This is safe…_

"Missed you," he murmurs against her neck.

_I might die,_ she thinks. _Either that or melt._

"Missed you, too."

**

* * *

Author's Rant:** Hi Peggy, nice to see you again. Shame my writing talent hasn't shown up too. Bah Humbug.


	3. Ice Cream

**Three: Ice Cream**

Peggy is eating ice cream.

It's distracting.

Sam clears his throat, shifts uneasily and decides it's time to pick up the conversation again.

"So," he begins, "about that talk we had before Dean and I got here…"

She pauses and raises her eyebrows at him. "There were a few of those, y'know."

He pretends to fidget with his napkin. "Well, yeah, but I was thinking of the one where you told us you found this place."

She freezes, eyes switching to him, looking a little panicked.

Dean looks ecstatic.

"Yeah!" he chimes in. "The one when you told us about the –"

* * *

July fourteenth was, apparently, Bastille Day.

"Or it would be," Peggy said, six days later over the phone as they headed relentlessly west, "if we were in any way, you know, French."

"What about the French?" Dean put in, diving back into the car with his and Sam's breakfast. He was grinning. Right then, Sam knew speaker-phone had been a mistake. "Great people the French," his brother continued. "You know they invented kissing with tongue?"

"Dean," Sam and Peggy said identical tones of warning.

"And French knickers," Dean continued, the grin going fiendish. "And _ménage à trois_."

Peggy, rather unwisely, Sam thought, chose this moment to scoff, "Oh like you'd know."

"And _you_ would?" Dean shot back, only to be met with…a rather telling pause.

* * *

"We are _not_ having this conversation!" Peggy yelps.

"Aw, c'mon!" Dean wheels. "Why not?"

She flails, looking mortified. Sam only just manages to rescue her ice cream cone before it goes flying.

"Because!" she says. "We're just…not!"

"But it's so _interesting_!" says Dean, eyes sparking.

Peggy hides her face and lets out a soft groan.

Sam begins to feel a little guilty.

* * *

The boys exchanged looks. "Um, Peggy?"

"Ice cream!" Peggy blurted, voice about an octave higher than it should have been. "I found this great ice cream place a few blocks from my building. Ahem."

And that was all Dean could get out of her on the subject.

Sam steered the conversation to safer waters and rang off promising to call Peggy once they hit the city limits.

* * *

"And here we are," Peggy says, trying to derail Dean, "here, at the ice cream place, having great ice cream. Ahem."

"Oh, no," Dean carries on, "you're not getting out of it that easily. I wanna know what that pause was all about."

* * *

"What was that all about?" Dean asked, handing his brother what turned out to be a breakfast burrito.

Sam shook his head, "Hell if I know. It's Peggy."

"Well, yeah, exactly. It's _Peggy_." Dean had that incredulous look on his face that he always wore whenever Sam said anything about country music being 'not that bad'. "Its Peggy…and _ménage à trios_."

Sam grinned. "What, the girl can't have hidden depths?"

"_That's_ what you call hidden depths?"

Sam gave him the 'whatever' face and was about to get stuck in the burrito when Dean added, "Dude, what were you _doing_ in college?"

* * *

"Hang on; what _were_ you doing in college?" Peggy says, turning to Sam, who instantly changes colour.

"Definitely not what you're thinking," he returns. "Or what _you're_ thinking," he adds to an owl-eyed Dean.

It's at this point that Peggy remembers to be indignant. "And what does, 'Well, yeah, exactly. It's _Peggy_' mean? Just what are you implying Dean Winchester?"

Dean makes a hasty retreat, sitting back in his chair. "Well…I dunno, you just…don't really seem the type, Peg." Then he puts his foot in it. "You just seem too…sensible."

Behold the Medusa Face in all its scornful and womanly glory.

Dean looks as though he wants to fold himself up inside his shirt and disappear. Sam is forced to hide his laughter with a cough.

Peggy tosses her dark curls (as much as you toss chin-length hair) and goes back to eating her ice cream, saying loftily, "Shows what you know, Dean-a-saurus."

_And we're right back to square one_, thinks Sam, chin on one hand and happy to be distracted.


	4. Tattoo

**Four: Tattoo**

Sam never noticed it before, but then the last time he saw her face to face LA was covered in clouds and damp, and there was no reason for her to be wearing…very short shorts…

There's a lot of pale, creamy skin on display…not that he's _looking_…

But it also reveals the tattoo; a trail of curling Celtic knot work that stops a third of the way down her left thigh, probably beginning at some mystery spot further up her leg. Without really thinking, Sam stares, trying to make out the more intricate parts of the design.

Then Peggy catches him out.

"Uh, Sam?"

"Hmm?"

"Whatcha doin'?"

He looks up, realizing _exactly what he's doing_, and feels his ears go red.

"Uh…I was just…you're um…your tattoo," he finally manages. "I was trying to figure out what it is."

To his relief, she smiles.

The she walks over to the couch where he's sitting, stands very close, and tugs up the hem of her shorts.

Sam's ears are on _fire_.

"I got most of it my first year of Uni," she tells him, thankfully not noticing. "Nineteenth birthday present."

He's intrigued. "Who from?"

She shrugs. "I was dating a biker," she says dismissively, flipping one hand. "Part of the whole big, badass, moving-to-the-city phase. Can you see the animals?"

"What animals?"

She's smiling now. "There are a few animals hidden in the knot work."

Without thinking, he reaches up and rests one hand on her hip to hold her steady and peers at her leg, tracing the design with the fingertips of his opposite hand, trying to puzzle out the hidden shapes.

Peggy obligingly goes very still.

Sam peers at the coils and arcs, finding a muzzle, a spine, the curve of a limb and a tail. Closer to the top, he can make out the shapes of two spread wings.

"There's a…is that a cat?"

Peggy lets out a small, faintly breathy laugh. "Yeah, got it when I came over here. See the one above it?"

"The bird?"

"The owl."

"Oh yeah…" He smiles, leans back and looks up at her. "Why a cat? Or an owl, for that matter?"

She shrugs again, gives him a small half-smile. "The owl was for when I graduated, got my degree."

"Right, showing wisdom?"

She chuckles, "Yeah, but mostly because my first short story got published that month, 'The Owl Woman.' My brother –"

"One of the ones that blue up the cow shed?"

She smirks. "No, goob, the one who rides a Suzuki Bandit and builds boats."

"I can never keep track…"

"There _are _a lot of them. Anyway, he was still working in town back then, so he took me out to dinner to celebrate and then to the parlor to get my tat added to."

"And the cat?"

She bits her lip, trying to smother a shy smile. "Um…don't laugh."

He grins back. "Why? Why would I laugh?"

"I don't know…some people think it's funny."

"…_Is_ it funny?"

"Sam!"

He laughs outright. "C'mon, just tell me; I promise to try not to laugh."

She mutters and grumbles, but says eventually, lower lip out in a pout, "my favourite rhyme when I was little was _The Owl and the Pussycat_…"

Far from laughing, Sam says, "You're kidding."

She blinks at him, all wide blue eyes, and shakes her head.

Sam is nonplussed. "I made Dean read that to me just about every single night when I was five. Dad, too, when he was home."

The smile she smiles is slow and bright. It begins at the left corner of her mouth, a gentle curl that rises, followed closely by the right corner until it fills her face and brightens her eyes. She smiles with her whole face, and makes Sam think of a sunrise.

"You never told me," he stammers a little helplessly, "about the first part of it. The nineteenth birthday present."

She looks thoughtful. "I didn't, did I?"

She smoothes down the hem of her shorts and tugs a little at the waistband, keeping it down by hooking a thumb though one of the belt loops. On the pale swell of her hip, Sam can see the beating heart of the tat; the comet whose tail is the owl and the cat.

He doesn't need to puzzle this one out. It leaps from its tangling framework, drawing his eyes; the shape of it is cleverly wrought from the empty spaces in the knotted arcs and switchbacks.

It's a white elephant.

In profile, only one eye is visible; dark, deep blue, and seeming to gaze right at him.

"When I was little," Peggy was saying softly, "my grandmother died. The last thing she gave me was a set of wooden animals. Our favourite was the oldest of them all; the white elephant who sees the world."

She looks at him, face thoughtful and restive.

"It's strange," she murmurs, "but when I first met you, I dreamed about that elephant. About Gran too. What d'you think it means?"

He crooks a smile at her, secretly fighting to breathe.

"I don't really think dreams have meanings."

_But visions do._

---


	5. Shiver

**Five: Shiver**

Dean spends his time at Peggy's dozing under the Californian sun. There is a patch of grass near the craggy, stunted orange trees that he's especially fond of. Its here that he sprawls, happily basking in only his jeans and a light smattering of sun-block at Peggy's insistence.

"I don't get why you're so anal about it," he grumbled. "I never get burnt."

"You try living in the country that's just below the hole in the ozone layer," she muttered, briskly buffing the stuff over his shoulders.

"_That's_ never going to happen," Dean returned.

Peggy just rolled her eyes.

Now, he can here her talking to Sam, and knows the two of them will be lying on their bellies, shoulder to shoulder on the grass with a heap of loose papers and two open binders scattered around them in a wide arc. Peggy, when he cracks one eye open and peers to the left, is tapping the end of a red pen against her lower lip and humming while Sam reads something aloud.

"…_the plume of dust in his wake, the rise and fall of the world as it spills away behind him_…"

He knows those words. Has seen them scribbled in his brother's handwriting on a diner napkin and later in the corner of a page of printed kelpie notes.

Literature was never his thing, and he got as far with poetry as dirty limericks about women from Peru or whatever, but he liked that line of Sam's. It made him think of the car with the road beneath her and all the goodbyes that echoed through his Dad's music collection.

"I don't know what comes after," Sam is telling Peggy. "I've just got that one line going round in my head over and over. Writing it down helps."

She nods, quirking a smile around the end of the pen. There are teeth marks in the plastic. "Some lines just haunt you until they find a place to fit," she explains. "I had one that dogged me for months."

His brother looks a question at her.

"What?" she asks, honestly puzzled.

Dean closes his eyes again, smiling to himself. She's so oblivious it's cute.

"What was the line?"

"You want to hear it?" He can hear the incredulity in her voice.

"Well, yeah."

"Oh for the love of… '_She sighed – low, warm, melancholic – and they spread as bright arcs from her back; bone and flesh and filaments…the wings that no one else could see._' Happy?"

"I like it…"

Dean misses the rest of the conversation, drifting off in the lazy heat, the air smelling of burnt grass and orange peel.

But when he dreams, he dreams of angels, the world filled with ash and snow and whirling feathers as they fly.

* * *

**AN:** Please review?


	6. Night Watch

Author's Note: This one's for IHeartSPN who's just made of frickin' awesome.

* * *

**Six: Night Watch**

She lies on her side, fists bunching the sheet tangled across her legs and hips, and listens to the night sounds of the apartment.

On the other side of a rather thin wall, she can hear him dreaming.

Dean is sacked out on her second-hand futon in the big main room, snoring comfortably with the cat asleep at his feet, but Sam is thrashing on his mattress in the tiny spare room next to her bedroom. She can't make out the muttered words, but the tone is clear.

Wherever his brain has taken him, he's not happy to be there.

There's the sound of a muffled sob and a thud when he flails hard enough for his knuckles to crack against the wall. It doesn't wake him, he's in so deep, but Peggy grips the sheet a little tighter and sternly tells herself to _stay_.

It's unfair, terribly unfair, because she knows she can help. _Knows_. And it should be fair for her to hold his hand and bring him back to the air-conditioned hush of the apartment.

She remembers the hospital, the horrible red-soaked nightmares that kept her from sleeping as she lay recovering from the drowning. She remembers Sam's large, warm hand in hers, and finally being able to sleep without dreaming. She should be able to do the same for him, but their friendship is really only new, and to invade his privacy now could loose them to her forever.

She's not sure she could stand that.

Another sob and a low rasp that could be a name. Peggy curls in on herself. The urge to climb out of bed and pad into his room, slip between the sheets and wrap herself around him is so very strong. She wants to cocoon him in the portable safe place she's been carrying around inside her for some many years; since she left the farm and set foot in the big smoke at age eighteen, since she got on that plane and flew for ten hours to get to LA and all its just-out-of-reach possibilities.

But it won't happen, she can't let it, and she curls further and further in on herself, one hand reaching out to grip the little white-painted wooden elephant on her bedside table and hold it close to her chest.

_Please_, she prays. _Please…_

---

In the other room, Sam goes still as dream becomes vision.

_The field is still dark, but as his hand touches the elephant's dry, pale skin the sky opens up and stars come out, struggling to light the reluctantly relenting blackness._

_The white elephant bows its head, and he reads the word written down its narrow spine._

"_I don't understand," he whispers. "Who are you, really?"_

_Its voice is a sigh inside his head, the blue eyes falling momentarily closed._

_The inked word runs like rain from its back…_

But when he wakes, breath a rasp, he can't remember what it said, and the only thing that lingers behind his eyes when he closes them again is the day the rain stopped the last time they were in LA…when they said goodbye to Peggy outside the studio.

He falls asleep again remembering the kiss.

* * *

AN2: Reviews are love. And I need lovin'.


	7. Talk

Author's Note: Thanks to my lone reviewer IHeartSPN (hugs!) Anyway, we're starting to get a bit more plot and continuity here. Also, Peggy and Dean bonding, which is always fun. Enjoy!

* * *

**Seven: Talk**

Bastille Day morning they leave Sam engrossed in one of Peggy's old books and head for the corner store where she does her groceries. Dean drives, relegating Peggy to shotgun and as is traditional; he chooses the music and she shuts her cakehole. She smirks and make faces the whole way there though, laughing as Dean attempts to tell her off and reaches out one long arm to prod her in the ribs when she sticks her tongue out at him.

"Real mature there, Peg."

She just chortles back at him.

Dean hasn't been grocery shopping like this in a while, so it's rather novel for him. Sam's had them on the road so hard recently trying to find some magic deal-breaker that they've been eating more takeout than usual, barely stopping long enough for eat-in diner food or staying with Bobby who contrary to appearances is quite the cook.

On that note, so is Peggy. Apparently, all seven of the Patcher kids were taught to cook for themselves and others, some thing their mother (former ruthless photojournalist and die hard survivor) insisted upon. And she must have taught them well because if Peggy's pie-making skills are up there with her steak stroganoff and rosemary potatoes Dean will one day die a happy, happy man having eaten as many of them as humanly possible.

"Hello, Earth to Dean." Peggy dances her hand across his field of vision. "You in there, Dean-a-saurus?"

"Hmm? Yeah, just thinking."

"Does it hurt?"

He growls at her and feints a swat at her, which she easily ducks, chortling.

"What about then?" she amends. "Cute little Mona over at the till?"

He smirks. "Well I was thinking about pie, but now cute little Mona's there too." He leers. "Guess what she's doing with the pie."

Peggy rolls her eyes and scoffs at him, aiming a packet of chocolate buttons at his chest. He catches it and adds it to their basket.

"Hey, d'ya think Mona really is a moaner?"

She mock punches his belly and Dean bends at the waist, puffing theatrically, "oh, she got me!"

Peggy rolls her eyes. "I am not discussing the till girl's coital habits with you, Dean."

He peers up at her, grinning. "Aw, c'mon."

"It's not my idea of stimulating conversation."

He straightens, sniggering. "Really? 'Cause it certainly sounds like _my_ idea of _stimulating_ conversation."

"…I walked right into that one didn't I?"

"Pretty much."

The rest of the trip is mostly uneventful. Dean flirts outrageously with Mona when they finally get to the checkout, and then catches Peggy standing on tip toe to mouth, _'Man-whore!'_ to her over his shoulder. He bundles both Peggy and groceries out to the car, leaving Mona laughing with her head thrown back at the till.

Then things take a somewhat serious turn.

"Hey, Dean."

"Yeah, Peg."

"You know Sam's been having nightmares, right?"

He closes his fists a little tighter on the steering wheel and wonders how to answer.

They're hunters; there's always something to give them nightmares, but what exactly could have set Sam off this particular time? Unless seeing Peggy again has in turn brought up memories of Madison. Dean knows that Madison was the first girl Sam let himself feel for in a long time, since that brief interlude with Sarah, really, and losing her the way he did had nearly cut Sam in half. Then meeting Peggy less than a month later…

Peggy is the girl Sam got to save. He literally breathed the life back into her. Dean doesn't think he'll ever forget the look of crushing horror and desperation on his brother's face as he hauled her body from that tub. When mouth-to-mouth finally sent the fluid spasming from her lungs it was like watching a light go on behind Sam's eyes.

Even now, Dean's not entirely sure whether Sam's affection and attraction to Peggy (and yes, he's noticed, you'd have to be blind, deaf and have half a brain not to) is emotional rebound from Madison or something genuine. It's something he's in two minds about; Peggy's his friend, and if she gets into a relationship with his brother that doesn't work out, it'd just out and out suck.

On the other hand, they could make each other happy. Which would make Sam easier to travel with. And it would mean more frequent stops to see Peggy…which would mean more pie…

"Dean?"

Damn. "Yeah, Peg, just thinking."

She narrows her eyes at him. "This isn't really the time for Mona and pie, Dean-o."

He gives her a small half-smile. "No Mona and no pie, I swear. It's just…we're hunters, Peggy. There's a lot on the table that could be givin' him nightmares."

"But you know he's been having them recently?"

Dean nods. "We both get them, on and off. It depends how bad the job's been."

She looks forward, face anxious. "Could it be about Madison?"

Either she's psychic, or woman's intuition is something Dean should start worrying about.

"What makes you say that?" he asks.

"You guys met me just after she died…"

Ah, hell. Her face closes down a bit, and warning bells go off for Dean.

Sure enough; "Maybe it wasn't such a good idea for you guys to come," she murmurs.

"Hey," he says, perhaps a little more sharply than intended, but it gets her attention. "Don't go saying crap like that. Just don't. Coming here was a great idea. We need downtime like this, Peg. Sam won't admit it sometimes and the rest of the time I won't either, but we do need it. And besides," he looks straight ahead at the road; things are getting a little intense and this next bit's a bit harder to say than it should be, "you're one of our only friends."

He glances over at her, and oh the relief, she's smiling. It's just a little smile, but its there.

"So, what do we do about Sam's nightmares then?"

Dean shrugs. "He usually does better with someone in the room with him, only there's no way we're getting the couch mattress into your spare room."

"And sticking him on the couch with you isn't an option either," Peggy adds matter-of-factly. "It might be classed as two-person bed but in this case we'll call it a Dean-single."

"You callin' me fat, Peg?"

"No I'm calling you a sprawler and a bed hog."

There's no way to dispute that so Dean tries another tack. "We could stick him in with you," he suggests slyly.

Peggy is not amused. She is blushing though.

"Git," she mutters.

Dean smiles. "Alright, alright, I'll be good. Scouts honour."

"You were never a scout," Peggy scoffs, still rather pink in the face.

"Sadly, yes I was. Very briefly."

She goggles at him. "Sam too?"

"Sam too."

"…did you wear the little neckerchiefs and khaki shorts…?"

Dean mock scowls at her. "Watch it, Peg-Leg."

She grins at him, before going a little somber round the edges, watching the road pass below the Impala's asphalt eating stride.

"They'll get better, won't they?"

It's not a promise he can make, but he does it anyway because it's what you do for friends.

"Yeah." He offers another smile. "We'll figure something out."

She smiles back, and it's a start.

* * *

AN2: Hope you guys had as much fun reading as I did writing. Let me know!


	8. To Market

**Eight: To Market**

There are several things that both Winchester boys know for sure about Peggy Patcher; she makes a mean stroganoff, can shoot and hit what she's aiming at, was raised on a farm, loves to write (and according to Sam is quite good at it), has a pack of rambunctious brother back home and walks like a goddamned cat.

She's also good at keeping secrets.

Dean and Sam know she had plans for today, it's the reason they're here, but they've yet to find out what it is exactly that's happening.

It's making Dean a little antsy…

They drop off the groceries and Peggy changes into her 'Bastille Day best'; a cream and blue sundress that makes Dean remember smudged flashes of the willow-pattern china his mother had kept, and makes Sam blink and stutter and smile by turns.

They troop back to the Impala and Peggy sits between the brothers on the centre of the bench seat. She and Sam spread the roadmap across both their laps and their heads bent together as they study it, looking up in stereo to give Dean directions as they find their way.

Their route takes them out of the city and they drive until they hit green scrub and hills, get lost once on the way and then finally find their way into woods and mountains. An ill-used gravel road leads them on and on…

"Peggy, where is it we're going exactly?"

She just smiles. "You'll see."

It's maddening, but Dean keeps going. Over a low rise, down a road turned to a tunnel of greened sunlight by the trees, loose stones crunching and pinging under the Impala's tires…

Dean perks up, listening hard. "Is that…"

Peggy's eyes are lighting like sparks.

"…music?" Sam finishes, both curious and puzzled.

It is, its music, drifting to them through the open windows from between the trees.

"Here," Peggy says, pointing to a driveway curving away from the main drag. "Turn here, Dean."

It looks like a private road, but Dean takes her word for it and glides the muscle car round. Another rise, the sunlight builds, whiter and whiter until they come free of the trees…

"Oh, wow," Sam says.

"Oh, man," Dean cackles.

The clearing is filled with red, white and blue striped awnings, wide umbrella's in every colour imaginable, ribbons tided to the surrounding trees to blow in the light breeze, and people, people everywhere eating and laughing and crying their wares and busking on the corners of the grassy walkways.

"It's a market," Sam says, smiling.

"A _Bastille Day_ market," Peggy says, her own smile full to bursting. "So, what do you guys feel like for breakfast, crêpes or croissants?"


	9. Little Things

**Nine: Little Things**

Its little things that get him.

The quiet, earnest look on her face when she encourages him to write.

Her hand brushing his shoulder, the feel of her skin under his fingertips.

When she sings under her breath, smiles at his jokes, makes him smile with her jokes.

The sleepy look on her face as she scrambles eggs and brews tea in the morning, hair curling dark over hear forehead…

The cream and blue dress that shows the freckles on her pale shoulders, the enquiring smile she sends him as she absently lips sugar and lemon juice from her thumb. The pad of the digit rests against her lower lip for moment and the heat under his skin and the tug in his belly is an echo from that outside the studio gates; a kiss he's tempted to repeat, though this one would hardly be a goodbye.

Dean calls out for them to hurry it up from two stalls down, and Peggy rolls her eyes.

Sam smiles and finishes the last of his cooling crêpe. He's going to be selfless this time. He's going to stay arms length. Relationships with Winchesters don't end well and he's not…

"Come on," she says, taking his hand and leading the way through the crowd, "before His Lordship busts a gut."

Sam closes his fingers around hers.

He's just not, no matter how difficult it might be getting.

* * *

**AN: **Sam's slipping...but we all know he's really got a will of iron. He's gonna take a while to come round. Of course, it all depends on you, readers. Just how quickly do you _want_ him to come round?


	10. Keepsakes

**AN to Autumn (and anyone else who's listening):** Darlin', I know _just_ how you feel. When Peg first came to light, she was 'just friends' material...but then she and Sam started having this weird on-page chemistry (try picturing me peering at my screen muttering suspiciously, "What the fuck are you two up to?") which was immediately picked up on by certain reviewers over at _A Hollywood Hazing_ (you know who you are, you bastards) and it all proceeded to gang up on me and force my hand.

That, and if I don't follow through at this point, IHeartSPN may very well hope a plane from Oz, hunt me down and kick my arse.

* * *

**Ten: Keepsakes**

It's Dean who finds them, sitting in a slightly haphazard row on the other side of the marketplace, their hoods catching the brilliant noon sunlight.

Classics.

All of them.

Dodges and Mustangs and Pontiacs…even a few Chevys and one lovely vintage Rover in British racing green. Funnily enough, most belong to stallholders or families having picnics on the grass nearby, instead of the expected hardcore car fanatics.

Dean loses himself in amongst them, sighing like a schoolgirl. Sam follows his brother a little helplessly, because Dean wants someone to vent his joy to as he drinks in all that handsome car-flesh.

Peggy slides discretely away, and heads for the antique stalls.

In her own kind of heaven, she cruises by handmade French-style cabinetry and beautifully restored furniture originally bought in Lyon and Marseilles and Paris. She examines elegant china and lonely mismatched crockery. She finds a set of pure iron fire pokers and lingers over them, remembering the fireplace in the farmhouse back home. There's an old compass as big as the palm of her hand that once belonged to a ship called _Petite Christine_. She sighs over a set of cameo earrings and a little dragon in tarnished brass, both so barely out of her price range its heartbreaking.

She moves on, and spends the next few minutes sifting through a plate of broken broaches, mismatched earrings, lost buttons and random beads come loose from what seems like a thousand different necklaces and bracelets.

Its times like this, when she's not looking for anything in particular, that she's always found her most precious prizes.

Her grandmother was exactly the same, and this time is no different.

It catches her eye from where it sits, the one point of white in a swirling well of colour; a bead the size of her thumbnail made of what is probably very old cream ivory or bone. It's box-shaped, rectangular, with smooth, dulled edges and the simple silhouette of an elephant carved into its face. The animal's shape stands out beautifully, its outlines rubbed with dark blue ink.

She loves it immediately, and pays the faintly outrageous fifteen dollars for it without even thinking to haggle. She knows what she'll thread it on too; there's a strip of braided navy leather in her jewelry box at home from a necklace that she never wore, but would do perfectly for the elephant bead.

She turns it over and over in her fingers, tracing its edges as she walks, and the idea comes to her without her even looking for it.

Tucking the bead safely away in her bag with the rest of her purchases, she goes to find Sam.

* * *

AN2: So...anyone else sensing a theme?


	11. Pause

**AN:** Loves to all who reviewed and alerted and faved. On a side note...I'm evil. You'll see why. This one's kinda for Autumn who hearts the Dean and Peggy relationship (and I do too, they're so funny to write).

* * *

**Eleven: Pause**

She finds Dean first, blissed out on the grass near the hoard of classic cars, lying on his back and basking in the morning sunshine like he does on her rooftop garden. He's got his arms folded behind his head, shoes kicked off and a big silly grin on his face.

She adores seeing him like this, because she knows he gets so little time to _be_ like this.

Peggy tosses her bag down beside him and lets her legs fold under her, coming to rest with the small of her back against his left hip. Dean doesn't stir. His smile becomes a bit more pronounced though, and he says, "You just missed him. He snuck off about ten minutes ago."

"No doubt to escape the incoherent motor-babble."

One green eye peels half-way open and regards her. Peggy grins unrepentantly over her shoulder at him.

"You just wait," he tells her. "You'll get yours."

She laughs, tipping her head back and enjoying the sun, safe in the knowledge that her all-day sun block will save her from uber-freckles and a red nose.

"Any idea where he snuck off too?"

"Is there somewhere selling books?"

"Three different stalls."

"Find the one hawking off the oldest stuff, and you'll find Sam."

"Or I could just text him."

"…or you could just text him."

Peggy snickers, twisting in place and reaching over him to dig in her back for her phone. She rests one hand on his chest for balance, earning a half-annoyed grunt from Dean.

"What am I to you, a piece of furniture?"

She smiles, pats his stomach. "Sure. I happen to think you'd make a great footstool."

Dean snorts and prods her ribs before dozing off while she texts Sam. Peggy leans back against his hip and stretches her legs out, arranging the skirt of her dress and crossing her ankles. In her minds eye, she pictures the elephant bead and turns it silently over and over. The sound of her phone going off startles her back to full awareness.

**Msg from Sam:** _B back sn. Gettin sumthn. Wats Dean doin?_

She texts back: _Having a nap._

**Msg from Sam:** _Ur kidding._

_Nope. He's like a freakin cat._

She hits send and flicks her hair out of her face, gazing idly about, drinking in the market-day atmosphere that she's always loved. It's a far cry from the little Saturday morning affairs at Matakana and Waiheke at home, but every market everywhere is an echo of every market everywhere else, and the common elements make her happy. She loves the smell of food in the open air, the sunshine and the human chatter. Children laughing and running back and forth on the grass, stall-holders actually calling wares like she remembers from some of the larger European markets, young woman giving her the jealous, hairy eyeball…

Oh wait, that part's new.

_And all your fault_, she thinks, glancing over her shoulder at an oblivious Dean.

All the green looks she's getting…and it's all in vain. Peggy has never really set off Dean's shag-radar. Dean's never told her why, but she thinks he might when he's ready. Peggy knows why he doesn't set off hers; he's just too much like Tim.

Tim Patcher: leather jacket-wearing, motorbike-riding, sweetheart-breaking big brother number three. Tim, who bought her owl tat for her, taught her to ride his bike and dated no less than four of her friends in high school.

He's also part of the reason she gets along so well with Dean. The other part is that Dean's just easy to get along with if he wants to be. She knows he can be and ornery bastard when he wants to be, Sam has told her as much and there have been times over the past two months or so when she's talked him down from one of his more fraught moments. It was difficult, doing that over the phone, but she kept talking, and Dean kept listening, and things got calmer.

It's nice having someone she trusts and can be comfortable with.

Of course, that's not to say she doesn't want to strangle him sometimes.

Deano's not an idiot, and he and Sam have been practically living in each other's pockets for eons. The big man-slut's radar-o-lurve probably went off the charts with the way Peggy's been finding herself giggling and blushing with Sam. As if that's not bad enough…she's reasonably sure things on that score are mutual.

Reasonably sure.

Pretty sure.

It's not like he's made any moves or anything. Its mostly just the looks, and the little touches, and they fact that he'll grab her hand and lead her if he wants to show her something instead of shooing her like Dean does. And he always hangs on when she grabs his hand…and oh godly God, she's turned into a third-former navel-gazing over hand-holding.

_Mental slap_, she thinks. _Mental. Slap._

It's at that point that the man of the hour arrives, striding towards them with his shades in place against the Californian sun, a bag of books in one hand and a small box of handmade chocolates in the other.

He smiles when he sees her, and it lights up his face.

Books. Chocolate. Unspeakable hotness.

Perfect man.

_So very, very out of my league_, thinks Peggy, perhaps a little miserably, but smiling sunnily the whole time.

Because really, when faced with _that_, what else is a girl to do?

* * *

**AN2:** Poor Peg. Ah well. I'm torturing Sam next, so all fair in thwarted love and war. Review sweet peas!


	12. Poetry

**AN:** Just a short one this time, but there will of course be more to come. I had some real fun with this one…

* * *

**Twelve: Poetry**

Collapsing on the grass next to Peggy and his brother, Sam reflects that a year ago if you had told him this would be how he would spend a week in July, he would have laughed. He really, honestly would have laughed.

The last time he remembers spending time like this is…before. When Jess was alive. When Dad was. When Dean wasn't…dying.

He hates thinking about it, but it riddles his thoughts, getting bigger and darker and eating at him like a cancer.

But its hard to think about here. There's too much sunlight, too many people and for once he doesn't feel alienated by the fact. The festival atmosphere is strong and pulls him along with it. Peggy is basking in it beside him, using Dean as a backrest and leaning her shoulder against Sam's to peer at the book he has open in his lap. They share the chocolates he's bought that are already going soft in the sun and she licks the sweet smudges from her fingers, sucking it from the pad of her thumb (so _distracting_!)

Sam manfully gathers his wits and chats with her about his books. This one is on witch hunts. The next is on central European folklore. The one after is a collection of poetry and Peggy reads a few of the shorter ones aloud, voice low and faintly husky.

There's one that damn near kills him, and almost does her in too, if the blush is anything to go by…although that could just be the beginnings of sunburn…

"_I am like a jackfruit on the tree.  
To taste you must plug me quick, while fresh:  
the skin rough, the pulp thick, yes,  
but oh, I warn you against touching --  
the rich juice will gush and stain your hands."_

Nope. That's a blush for sure. She's close enough that he can smell her sun-block and oh hell, her _hair_…

_Get it together, Winchester, you're getting hot from a suggestive poetry reading._

_Think noble thoughts._

Peggy selects another chocolate and flicks to a page with an extract from the Song of Solomon.

"_Thy two breasts are like two young roes that are twins, which feed among the lilies."_

Oh, _Christ_…

* * *

**AN2:** Poor Sam…he's just so much fun to torture. 'The Jackfruit' is by Ho Xuan Huong and the line from the Song of Solomon is the 5th of Chapter Four.


	13. Smug

**Thirteen: Smug**

The morning passes quietly into afternoon and then into evening.

As they pack up and walk back to the car Peggy teases him about his sun pinked nose, tells him he'll get a goggle tan from his sunglasses. Dean scoffs…but tries to covertly see if it's true in the reflection of the glass's lenses when he takes them off to clean then on his shirt.

Sam catches him at it, and snickers mercilessly.

They watch the last of the stalls packed away from the Impala's front seat and are among the last to leave the clearing. The drive back to the city is languorous, each of them full of lazy warmth and good food. Sam slings one arm along the top of the seat and Peggy lays her head against his shoulder, dozing with the fading light playing over her face.

Dean glances at them every so often and smiles, feeling irrationally smug.

* * *

**AN:** Just a short one this time, I know, but definitely with more (torture) to come. I just thought Dean deserved a moment to gloat; his man-slut's radar-o-lurve proving rather accurate again and all.


	14. For and Against

**AN:** I really, really enjoyed writing this. Peggy's internal torment about Sam always seems to express itself kind of hysterically for me, mostly because their relationship, surface-level anyway, is something of a comedy of errors. Dean agrees.

* * *

**Fourteen: For and Against**

Not long ago, Peggy sat down and made a list of pros and cons.

It was titled, "Reasons Not to Date a Winchester", (though if she was honest with herself the _real_ title was "Reasons Not to Date Sam Winchester")

The 'cons' column was about as long as her arm, very detailed and made several very good points. For example:

5. He's a hunter.  
18. He's wanted by the FBI.  
20. Long-distance really doesn't _begin_ to cover it.  
23. His brother is his whole world and you'll never come first.  
25. He's got issues.  
26._ You've_ got issues.  
30. It's not like you can take him home to Mum.  
34. If your brothers find out they'll traverse the globe and skin him.  
38. Chaos and bloodshed follows them round like a bad smell.  
41. You know they're keeping secrets from you.  
43. (And this is where it stopped being a Winchester list and started being a Sam one) Two out of three of his ex-girlfriends are dead and the other one is probably better looking than you.  
56. You'll only get hurt.  
57. You're starting not to care that you'll get hurt.  
62. Clearly you're out of your tree.

And that was just a sampler.

The 'pro' column was much shorter, was all Sam and had only the following entries:

1. He's possibly the nicest guy you've ever met.  
2. He saved your life.  
3. He trusts you.  
4. Dad would like him.  
5. …he smells amazing.  
6. Those warm, fuzzy feelings might be mutual.  
7. He gets the writing thing.  
8. Admit it, it's still better to have loved and lost than to have missed out on Sam Winchester.  
9. Dear God, have you _SEEN_ him?

Peggy sat back and read both lists, then face-planted the table and thought, 'God, I am so very screwed.'

She deleted both immediately after…but that hasn't gotten rid of them. They still circle round her, periodically adding to themselves and burning several holes in her brain…

She wakes as they trawl through suburbia, getting back to her apartment block, but keeps her eyes closed and pretends to still be sleeping.

Her head is resting on Sam's shoulder and one of his long arms is curled around her, holding her loosely against his side…only when Dean turns a corner, Sam holds her a little tighter, keeping her close and stopping her from sliding across the leather bench seat.

Led Zeppelin's 'The Rain Song' is playing softly on the Impala's tape deck and Sam's humming along, his voice a low, warm rumble in his chest. She can still smell grass and chocolate on his skin. His hair is still warm from the summer sunlight and it brushes her face whenever he looks down at her. It's sweet, and comfortable, and she really doesn't want to move…

And entry number 10 in the 'pro' column now reads, 'This'.

**

* * *

AN2: ** Remember, feedback is love!


	15. Ka Pai Kai

**AN:** Warning! Gratuitous Kiwiana and foodyism ahead! I swear, I can't help it; we're awful patriots and to eat!

**

* * *

Fifteen: Ka Pai Kai**

This is Peggy in the kitchen:

She stands centre stage, humming and tying on a black café apron with a slightly faded Red Bull logo on the pocket. As much of her hair as she can gather is bound back in short ponytail, and the bits that escape frame her face. When she turns, Sam can see the faint freckles she probably doesn't even know she has scattered over the pale column of her neck. There's a small scar on one exposed earlobe; he knows it's from where an earring got torn out when she fell off one of her ponies, age sixteen.

The Black Seeds – Peggy's cooking music – plays on the stereo, filling the apartment with the slow and easy rhythms of Kiwi dub/reggae fusion. She keeps time with her hips, moving with that sway-and-dip that girls do when they're not really thinking about it. Happy and absent-minded, and as he's come to expect from her, completely and unintentionally _distracting_.

For Sam anyway.

Dean's face puckers and he sends Sam an apprehensive look over the breakfast bar. Sam can only grin. This is not Dean's usual musical fare, but for Sam it brings back happier memories of Stanford…quite a few of the funnier ones too.

"You know I had stoner friends who used to listen to stuff like this," he comments.

Dean rolls his eyes and Peggy grins back.

"Me too."

This gets her an incredulous look from Dean. "You had stoner friends?"

Peggy snorts, getting out red bell peppers and button mushrooms, handing them to Sam where he sits ready with knife and cutting board. "I'm from Northland, Deano. Pot-crop country. Growers are almost as big a problem in the paddocks as the damned rabbits. Know how to trim steak?"

Dean's looking a little out of his depth now. He can cook, Sam knows, in a rudimentary kind of way; he had to when they were little because Dad hardly ever did…but putting a can of soup on the stove or throwing together a fry-up is a world away from trimming meat and making melt-in-the-mouth minute steak.

Or maybe its not…

Peggy grins at his expression and says, "Relax, Dean-a-saurus, you know your way around a knife; you're gonna be fine."

She pulls out the eye-filet and shows him how to carefully slice away the fibrous tissue and cut out the veins, then leaves the rest to him. And that's all it takes, too; a five minute tutorial and Dean's getting stuck into the filet like he's been doing it all his life. Peggy puts together a light marinade and shows him how fine she wants the meat cut.

It's left to soak up the marinade while Peggy microwaves potatoes 'til they're soft, then halves them and puts them into an enameled cast iron pot with butter and rosemary. They smell is amazing, and Sam can actually feel his mouth watering.

The steak is done in the big iron skillet, and the veggies follow soon after, the sweet peppers and earthy mushrooms gently sprinkled with balsamic reduction "to give a little kick." The only thing that Peggy doesn't cook from fresh is the frozen peas, and that's hardly a sin when she puts a little garlic butter over them.

To recap: minute steak, rosemary potatoes, garlic peas and a red bell pepper and button mushroom vegetable salad.

Sam takes his first bite and about dies.

Dean's got his eyes closed and lets out a low moan. "Peggy," he says through a mouthful of steak. "Marry me."

She tips back her head and laughs, shaking her head. Her hair is still tied back, but some of the more rambunctious curls have escaped, and her apron is thrown over the back of her chair. There's a glass of _rosé_in one hand and a contented air about her.

"As sterling an offer as that is, Dean, I'm gonna have to pass."

"…but you'll still cook for me, right?" followed up buy that patented little boy smile.

"Yes, Deano," Peggy says smiling indulgently and giving Sam a small wink, "I'll still cook for you."

Sam grins, and so does Dean, who's well aware he's being teased and too happy to care.

Sam raises his beer. "Happy Bastille Day."

The other two echo him and they clink bottles. Dinner is consumed in short order and with gusto, rather notably in Dean's case.

They sit back with their guts out in the aftermath, finishing their beers and talking in that easy, sleepy way that people do after a really good meal. Sam glances out the floor-to-ceiling windows that make up the north wall of the apartment; night has cloaked LA and the lights of suburbia are spread out below them, the winking stars lost in the light pollution.

When he looks back, Dean is smiling. "Now," he says. "I believe there was some promise of a pie…"

* * *

**AN2:** "Ka pai kai" is pretty much Maori for "good food". Feedback is love!


	16. French Tart

**Sixteen: French Tart**

"Peggy," says Dean. "That is not a pie."

They're up on the roof again, eating their desert under a clear night sky. The roar of the city is there, but distant, screened off by the tangled foliage of the garden. If he was looking, Sam would just be able to see the lights of it beyond the leaves of the stunted orange trees.

Dean turns accusing eyes on her, but Peggy only smiles.

"Of course it's not a pie," she answers cheerfully.

Dean is not impressed.

"I was promised pie," he says stubbornly.

"Well, its Bastille Day, sweetie, so you're gonna have to settle for tart."

Dean looks back at the dish, interest piqued but still wary. "Tart?"

"_French_ tart," says Peggy, picking up the knife and beginning to cut said culinary delight into generous eighths.

"I like the other definition of French tart," says Dean with a smarmy grin, tongue caught between his teeth.

"Yes, well, while I'll happily cook for you, my lad, there is no way in hell I'd do anything that could be defined as French tartism."

She pauses mid-slice.

"Is that even a word?" she asks Sam, who can only shrug and smile.

She and Dean have developed this easy back-and-forth almost overnight. There's a rhythm to it that Sam recognizes, and any second now…

"Really?" asks Dean, adding a friendly leer.

"Not if you were the last man on earth, Dean Winchester."

"Aw…why not, Peg-Leg?"

"God only knows where you've been," she says. "You could be contagious."

…she'll take him down a peg. No pun intended.

Sam can barely get air to breathe and hangs onto the side of the picnic table. Dean is all indignation.

"Now wait just a minute –" he sputters.

Peggy smiles serenely.

"I'd just like to point out at this juncture," she says, "that this is a cherry tart, and the only reason it's a cherry tart is because I happen to know that cherry is your favourite flavour."

Dean has nothing to say above a mumble, and nudges his bowl in the general direction of the aforementioned tart and the smiling New Zealander.

Sam catches her eye and grins. Poor Dean.

Oh well.

The tart is, as promised, amazing. Dean goes back for seconds and more chocolate ice cream, completely forgiving Peggy for the lack of pie and any injuries to his manly pride.

Sam takes his time, savoring the dish, and thinks to himself that there really is no arguing with a woman who can cook like Peggy does.

He looks up to find her looking at him with a small, quirking smile on her face.

"What?" he says.

The smile widens a little.

"You've got…hang on, hold still."

Sam freezes as she reaches for his face, holding his jaw with one hand and swiping the thumb of the other over the corner of his mouth. It comes away chocolaty – he's managed to get ice-cream on his face, again. Why does this only ever happen when he's with her?

Then Peggy absently puts her thumb against her lips and sucks the chocolate off.

For the second time that day, Sam thinks, _oh, Christ_.

**

* * *

AN:** And isn't it a kicker that she has no idea what she does to him?


	17. Starbursting

**AN:** What, nothing on 'French Tart'? I'm startled and appalled. I loved writing that chapter.

* * *

**Seventeen: Starbursting**

Sam remembers the last time he and Dean set off fireworks like this.

Fourth of July, back in ninety-six…over a decade ago, now.

It wasn't really like this, back then. It was a secret, something between the two of them that they kept from Dad. They'd burnt down the field where they let the fireworks off, and Sam's strongest memory of that night is turning and turning, arms out beneath a shower of light and sparks and falling stars with his brother.

This is…this is a little different.

It's not just him and Dean this time. Peggy is here, of course, barefoot and sitting on the ragged grass with them. Her back is to his shoulder, unthinkingly leaning against him so she can foot wrestle with Dean, who's been trying to grab said feet ever since Peggy mentioned she was ticklish. They're both laughing, each trying to gain the upper hand…foot…whatever.

She nearly goes sideways at one point, and Sam puts his arm about her shoulders to keep her upright, cheering her on and heaping affectionate abuse on Dean, who, to be quite frank, gives as good as he gets.

Peggy gains the advantage, snaking one lithe foot past Dean's defenses and managing to toe him in the ribs. He lets out a retaliatory yell a grabs her ankle.

"Nuh-uh," she yelps. "First hit to me! Off your arse, Winchester!"

"I was distracted!"

"You were not! Shoo!" She flicks her foot imperiously at him.

Dean obliges, grumbling the whole time, and stalks off to the box of fireworks. "You just wait, you'll get yours."

"You keep saying that," Peggy sing-songs at his retreating back. "But you know what I say?"

"What?" Dean calls over his shoulder.

"Light those firework, man-slut!"

Sam roars with helpless laughter, half hugging a snickering Peggy.

Dean grumbles, but a moment later there's the fizz of a fuse and then the whistling of rockets darting into the dark air. Their world is covered in sparkling brightness; white and gold and green and blue…and Dean stands in that pleased, bowlegged cowboy stance that is particular to him, silhouetted against the exuberant glare.

Sam gazes at his brother, and prints the image upon his eyes, prints it upon his mind and tucks it into the safe, secret place in his chest where the names of his family are written, to be kept for all time.

Peggy rests her head sleepily against his shoulder and he wishes, desperately, for everything to be okay.

* * *

**AN2:** Clearly I'm getting spoilt, expecting reviews. Ah well.


	18. Pace and Wait

**AN:** For my loyal reviewers. I heart you guys.

* * *

**Eighteen: Pace and Wait**

Sometimes, more recently now that before, she gets the feeling that she's losing them.

She realizes that a week together on a fatally haunted movie set and four months of deeply involved phone calls isn't the greatest basis for a friendship, but it's what she has with them, and it's something she wants to fight for.

Only she doesn't know how.

She doesn't even know what's taking them away.

But there's that feeling again…that awful creeping feeling up and down her spine and curdling in her gut like fear, just like fear, that tells her that slowly but surely…

She's losing them.

From the other room comes the sound of Sam whimpering in his sleep. Harsh breathing and a sob that sounds a little like his brother's name.

She wants her own brothers, suddenly, painfully. She wants to slouch about with Si and Morgy on the couch and watch boxset after boxset of _Buffy_. She wants to blow shit up with Nick and Dave and go for long, deadly motorbike rides with Tim.

She wants them to tell her she's being ridiculous and that nothing is going to take her heroes, her green-eyed boys from her.

Sam calls out again, and it breaks her.

Her hand tightens around the white elephant figurine and she slips from her bed. Dean's completely out on her couch, as usual, and doesn't stir as she pads softly past him.

The door to the spare room – Sam's room – stands open, and she slips in, her footsteps leaving no sound in their wake.

He's sprawled in a tangle of sheets, and even unconscious, the look on his face is heartbreaking. She can see the tear tracks running from the outer corners of his eyes into the hair at his temples, and the sweat standing on his forehead. He's panting like he's been running, and when she lays a hand on his wrist she can feel the racing of his heart as the blood beats against her fingertips.

He flinches and starts, voice rasping meaninglessly in his throat. Disjointed words, pleas and apologies for things that have happened regardless and weren't his fault to begin with.

"Sam," she breathes, "c'mon, sweetheart, it's only a dream."

His face rolls towards her, as though he heard, and she brushes the hair away from his forehead.

He stills, breath stuttering and then going soft.

She puts the white elephant in his hand and closes his fingers over it, kisses his sleeping mouth and slips out as quietly as she came.

Sam doesn't let go of the elephant, doesn't remember his nightmares, and in the morning will wonder how it got there.

* * *

**AN2:** I know. I'm evil.


	19. Unacceptable!

**AN:** More Peg and Dean bonding ahoy. I love writing these two, they're so hilarious together... Loves to all who reviewed, especially SuperBranch who felt the love in 'Pace and Wait'.

**

* * *

Nineteen: Unacceptable!**

Dean wakes with Peggy standing over him scowling.

"Gah!" he says, because let's face it; it's a frightening thing to wake up with Peggy Patcher standing over you scowling, and scowling is one step away from the Medusa Face and _that's_ a new experience in terror.

"It won't do, Dean," she says.

"What won't do?" Dean asks, pulling the sheet up over his chest and eyeing her warily.

Peggy's scowl deepens and Dean tenses. He's seen that look before…right before it morphed into the Medusa Face when she discovered the state he and Sam had left her boss's trailer in. day before their last in LA, onset at Hellhazers II, she came back from a writer's meeting with Marty, found the floor of the trailer covered with junk food wrappers and a pizza box…and just about killed them.

Dean maintains that he never recovered from the ordeal.

"The state of that car," she says, blue eyes intense.

"Your Honda?" he asks, genuinely puzzled. She keeps that little shit-box so clean you could eat off the dashboard.

"_Your _Impala," Peggy growls back.

"What's wrong with her?" Dean says urgently, sitting up and displacing Muss, Peggy's large, brooding tom. The cat growls irritably and slinks off to find a patch of sunshine to lie in instead. "Did something happen to her in the night?"

Peggy rolls her eyes. "No, you goob. There's nothing wrong with her other that the fact that she's so grubby you could write your name on her back window."

Dean stares at her.

"She's a lady, Dean," Peggy continues, throwing up her hands. "You don't go treating a lady like that!"

It's kind of endearing actually. Peggy's always subscribed to assigning genders and nicknames to cars. To her, like with Dean, the Impala is female and 'Sweetheart'. Peggy's second-hand Honda Shuttle, from the moment she laid eyes on its faded red paint-job, has always been 'The Fiend'.

"'The Fiend'?" Dean said incredulously, when she called to tell them about her purchase and emailed Sam a picture.

"I'll take you donutting in it sometime," Peggy assured him, "then you'll see what I mean."

You think you know a girl…

"So…" Dean struggles to understand what she expects from him, "what…I mean, how…"

It's really early in the morning.

"What are we doing?" he asks, resigned.

Peggy grins, hands on her hips.

"We," she says, all cheer and sweetness now that she's evidently going to get her way, "are going to give your girl a bath."

Dean immediately perks up. "We're having a carwash?"

"Yup."

"With water?"

"…yes."

"And less clothing than usual?"

"Probably."

"Are you inviting friends?"

Peggy rolls her eyes.

"Dean Winchester," she says, "you slut."

* * *

**AN2:** Oh, _Deano_. Don't ever change. Reviewing is love...!


	20. At the Carwash

**AN:** Sorry I've been so slack updating this! Inspiration only just struck!

**

* * *

Twenty: At the Carwash**

What began as Dean and Peggy giving the Impala a basic sort of rubdown has become…

Well…

"Sam, I'm pinned down! I need cover fire!"

A hail of water bombs hits the concrete on Dean's side of the car, and Peggy darts from their side to the relative shelter of the hedge bordering the driveway. Sam sees her squirrel her way through it, wedging herself in the upper branches and using the screen of foliage to hide from enemy fire.

Then the bright green nozzle of her water gun emerges and begins taking pot shots at Dean and his troops.

The kids shriek and dive for safety while their beleaguered general scrambles for a plan.

"Take cover!" Dean bellows, throwing tiny Hailey from 2B over his shoulder and heading for the other side of the drive.

"We're giving up?" demands nine-year-old Andy.

"No," Dean says as he lopes past with Hailey giggling on his shoulder, "we're strategically retreating!"

Sam stand and aims a water bomb at Dean's back.

"Look out," calls Hailey.

"What?" says Dean, and turns just in time to take a water bomb to the chest. "Son of a –!"

"We win!" crows Peggy from the top of the hedge.

"No way!" Dean shouts, indignant, "that so doesn't count!"

"Dean," Sam scoffs, "I got you in the chest. That's an unequivocal hit."

"Yeah," pipes up Trudy from beside him. "And since your team captain, when you go down, they _all_ go down." At thirteen she is incredibly smug for one so small (and nursing a crush for someone very tall…)

Peggy has made her way down out of the hedge and comes to stand with the rest of her team. There's still suds on her neck and arms from Dean's last salvo and her _HellHazers II_ t-shirt is sodden and sticking where she's knotted it above her left hip. She's wearing the shorts that show part of her tattoo…

Sam is momentarily distracted.

Just momentarily.

Right…

"We win, Dean-a-saurus," she says cheerfully, eyes glinting. "And you know what that means…"

"Yeah, yeah," Dean mutters, letting Hailey down from his shoulder, "ice cream on me…"

There is a unanimous cheer from the kids, and they flood back into the apartment building to change and ask their parents if they can go.

Peggy turns smiling to Sam.

"So, how did _you_ see the day turning out?"

Sam can only grin.

**

* * *

AN2:** Lemme know what you think on your way out. Cheers mates.


	21. Elephantine

**AN:** I updated, huzzah!

**

* * *

Twenty-One: Elephantine**

Sam knows that when he looks back at this trip, at the time they've spent here, it'll blur together. It'll become another sun-soaked dream, the way the time he spent at Stanford with Jess is becoming.

The days will bleed into a long skein of gold, an arc of sunlight filled with wonderful things, events and faces to be turned over in his mind while the miles slip past the Impala's front passenger window. He'll take them out and examine them in the darkness of motel rooms, wonder at them as he and Dean sip beer on the hood of the car and watch the stars as they do in their quiet moments and always have done.

He'll look at the stars, and remember the fireworks.

Remember the way they looked on those two nights; Independence Day '96 and Bastille Day '07.

He'll remember a shower of sparks and the open smile on his brother's face, his silhouette against the multi-coloured glow. He'll remember Peggy's laughter and her warm weight at his side, the lingering scents of black powder and sunblock and melted chocolate.

He won't remember the nightmares – doesn't remember them now – but he will remember waking with the elephant in his hand. The feel of the smooth wood against his palm, the faint grooves that his fingertips find that made up its tiny solemn face. He'll remember brushing his thumb over the little figurine's spine, over the darker patches where the white stain had worn away from frequent handling, showing the still fragrant sandalwood beneath. The dark eyes that were almost –

_The elephant bows its head to his open palm. Its eyes are lapis-blue, familiar, ancient._

– Almost –

_He can see the word upon its back, brushstrokes made by a giant hand, elegant letters from a language no longer spoken…one he can not read but knows anyway…_

– Almost, _almost_ –

"_I know you," he breathes._

_The elephant speaks in its hidden voice. "Yes, you do."_

_The graveyard is lit by the light of too many stars…_

"Sam?"

He blinks, eyes focusing.

Peggy is leaning over the back of the couch, smiling at him. Sam stares at her for a second, drinking in her features before slowing smiling back.

"You okay?" she asks.

He sits up, only then realizing he still has the wooden elephant in his right hand. "Ah, yeah, just kinda zoned for a second there."

"I saw," she says, coming round the couch and sitting so they face each other on it. "Where'd you go just now?"

He shrugs, looking down at the elephant and turning it absently in his hands. "Everywhere and nowhere. Y'know how sometimes you just…think of nothing for a while?"

"Yeah," Peggy says softly. She smiles again, tilts her face to the wooden elephant. "My Nana brought that back from India, you know, when I was six months old."

He looks up at her, genuinely curious. "Yeah?"

Her face is full of reminiscence. "I used to sleep with it tied to the headboard of my old crib. I don't think I've ever slept a night since then without it being in the same house as me." She laughs. "I freaked out my first night in Auckland when I couldn't find it in the junk I'd brought from home."

Something occurs to him suddenly. "That's why the nightmares were so bad when you were in hospital, after Lola's ghost almost…"

She nods. "It sucked. But, you know, it wasn't as bad as it could've been."

He looks a question at her.

"You were there," she answers. Her mouth half-curls in a smile.

He half-smiles back. "You gave this to me," he says, holding out the elephant, "last night, when I was…"

"When you were having nightmares," Peggy finishes softly. "Yeah. I just thought…it helps me, it might help you. Seemed to work. That's what I wanted to talk to you about, too."

She pulls something out of her shorts pocket and takes his left wrist in her hands. He leans forward a little, watching her. Its an echo of that day – _him and Dean leaving LA, the studio gates behind them, the sun showing its face for the first time that week_ – when she'd written her email address on this same wrist.

He kissed her not five minutes later.

When she draws back, looks up and sees his face so close, he thinks maybe she remembers that moment too, feels the echo of that day rich and visceral between them.

Her eyes flicker down, cheeks turning pink. Sam smiles secretly.

Then he looks down at what she's tied around his wrist.

The length of braided leather is deep blue, near black. She's knotted it just beside the rise of his wrist bone, and beside the knot…

The bead is a rough square of old ivory, cool against his skin. The elephant carved into is face is in profile, one foreleg raised as though readying to step from the pale surface and become an inky print on his skin, the way its cousin is in Peggy's tattoo.

"I found it at the market yesterday," she says, voice warm and faintly husky, the way it always is when she speaks so low. "I saw it and I thought, 'this elephant could keep the nightmares away when mine isn't there'…or something. It sounded better in my head…"

He looks up at her, eyes earnest. "Peggy, this is great, thank you."

She smiles, and it's like there's a secret even she doesn't know written in the shape of her face. Then, before he can think, she leans forward and presses the quickest of kisses to the corner of his mouth. Breathes, "Sweet dreams, Sam," against his cheek.

The elephant bead is warm against his skin.

"_I know you."_

"_Yes, you do…"_

**

* * *

AN2:** Oh look, plot, and by gosh, a recurring theme. Weird._  
_


	22. Hanging On

**AN:** This one's for BranchSuper, whose reviews continue to rock my authorly sockies.

**

* * *

Twenty-Two: Hanging On  
**

Peggy's a hugger.

She hugs everyone, all the time.

She hugs Sam, she hugs her cat, she hugs her friends when they drop by to see her, she hugs the kids from the neighboring apartments when she babysits them…

And she hugs Dean.

When he gets that faraway, edge-of-the-abyss look on his face – the one that Sam's not even sure he knows he has – Peggy will lean over and put her arms around his shoulders. She'll do that thing where she smooshes her cheek against Dean's, so that across the old picnic table, Sam can gaze at both of them. He mentally captures the image they make, two of the people he cares so much about in the world.

But you know what the crazy, brilliant, _heartbreaking_ part of it is? It's that Dean – who's never been much of a cuddler outside of Sam when they were little – he just puts one arm around Peg, almost absently, and hugs her back.

Sam pretends to read his book while his chest tightens, because however much of live-it-up-wild glutton Dean's been lately, however much food and sex and fast driving and bloody hunts he's put under his belt…this is better. This is something he needs, and can't really get from Sam or Bobby.

Sam and Bobby will try to save him 'til the very end. They love him, no question. There's blood, sweat, and lets face it, tears between them, and they're family.

But outside of the emotional moments of dodged danger, neither men are huggers.

It's okay though, because Peggy is.

Sam's not sure she knows what Dean's faraway looks are about, or what's been setting off Sam's nightmares. Maybe she thinks it's just the pressures of hunting, the things they've seen, and really, if you want to get technical about it, they are.

If the Winchesters had never been hunters they wouldn't be in this situation. Sam would have been yanked to Cold Oak with the other psychic kids back in May, probably have died, and Dean would've have been a mechanic in Lawrence whose brother went missing. He would have searched, and mourned, and moved on.

But the Winchesters are hunters. Things are the way they are. Sam copes.

He worries, though, that even if Peggy doesn't know about the Deal specifically, she knows something's wrong in a subconscious way. She heaps affection on them, hangs on to them. She tries in her own way to keep back the bad thing that's coming for them.

She puts her arms around Dean's neck and puts her face against his.

And each time, wonder of wonders, Dean puts an arm around her shoulder.

The faraway look goes away, and Dean comes back to them.

Sam's so glad Peggy's a hugger.

**

* * *

AN2:** I'm getting shockingly soppy aren't I? I feel a facepalm coming on...


	23. Cryptology

**AN:** So, so much love to two of my loyalist and lovely reviewers, IHeartSPN and BranchSuper!

**

* * *

Twenty-Three: ****Cryptology**

In the shallow, glistening LA dark, Sam lies on his side and waits for sleep.

He can hear Peggy tapping softly away on her laptop in the next room and the gentle whir of the AC throughout the apartment. Through the open door of his own room, can see Dean sprawled on the couch bed. Peggy's tomcat is a puddle of velvet black next to his brother's chest.

Somewhere in the building someone is playing a cello…

He sighs, swallows a yawn, rolls over –

– And feels the elephant bead warm against his wrist as he slips gently away and down into sleep.

_The white elephant gazes at him. Solemn, ancient. There is scope and destiny and far way places in those eyes._

"_Why won't you tell me?" he asks. "Please, just tell me who you are."_

_Its voice shivers through him and he feels it in his bones, like a phantom touch upon deeply buried nerves. "I cannot."_

"_I know you, I know I do!"_

_The elephant's head sways back, eyes closing briefly. "Yes, you do…"_

"_Just give me a name."_

"_I cannot."_

"_Why?" he says, desperate. Frustrated._

"_Because I do not know it."_

_Sam senses sadness, and without thinking, reaches out as he has before and places his palm upon the creature's broad head. The skin is warm, rough, though Sam thinks, _no, no it should be soft, it should smell like nectarines…

"_I do no know my name, Sam Winchester, but you do."_

He wakes with the sun on his face and the scent of ripe fruit on his palms.

**

* * *

AN2:** Oooooh, intrigue...


	24. Holy Dread

**Twenty-Four: Holy Dread**

"Hey, Peg?"

He's fidgeting, which is never good news. A fidgety Dean is a Dean with something on his mind and, subsequently, a Dean more likely to get a hold of one of her good pens and start playing with it…and then _breaking_ it.

"Yeah, Deano?" she says to cover her anxiety.

"Been thinking."

_Oh, crap…_

"'bout what?"

"Well…s'gonna sound kinda weird."

Peggy's eyebrows go up. "Said the Demon Hunter."

He smiles. "Right. Point taken… Hey, d'ya think you could teach me to cook?"

It's safe to say she's floored. "Uh, really? You…you want to learn to cook?"

"That's what I said, Peg-leg."

"Yeah, I know. Just wanted to make sure I wasn't hearing things. Or, you know, losing my mind."

He grins at her, that little-boy smile he uses to enchant the staff at every ice cream parlor they enter, but all Peggy can think is, _why won't you tell me what's wrong…?_

* * *

**AN:** Why _does_ Deano want to learn to cook? Two words. Bucket. List._  
_


	25. A Whisper

**Twenty-Five: A Whisper**

It doesn't take much to pique his curiosity, so it's no surprise that the constant elephant dreams are practically an engraved invitation to his need to investigate. He feels it under his skin, burning in his the tips of his fingers. It's so very like the itch to write that she awakened in him when they first met; only instead of getting words out he needs to get them in…

Peggy saw his hunted look at breakfast, and her smile was a balm for a short while. She begged the Impala's keys from Dean – because there's not much room in her Honda for Sam's long legs – and sent him on his way after Dean had pulled out a bunch of stuff from the trunk.

Sam's academic nose takes him to a second hand library near the university. He avoids the students he sees, feeling uncomfortably apart from them. The reminder of what he once was, how he was once so similar to them for a time, makes him hunch his shoulders and walk a little faster.

He's mourned Jess, he's moved on, but that doesn't stop him missing her, wishing what had happened to her were just a nightmare he could wake from. The memory of her tugs at him, touches his temples and his face, watches him with sad blue eyes.

Sam escapes into the dim, warm reaches of the old bookshop, and breathes a sigh of relief.

His ghosts leave him here. This is his territory. This is every quiet corner he's ever found filled with old paper in elderly books, dust that outdates both and second hand knowledge that will sooth the itch that creeps and claws at the tips of his fingers.

This is where he'll find his answers.

Two hours later he's found no less than sixteen books that make reference to a white elephant.

In Buddhist tradition, Buddha's mother dreamt of a white elephant presenting her with a lotus before she gave birth. In Southeast Asia, to be given a white elephant by the ruling monarch was a great blessing…until it became a great curse; white elephants were protected by sacred law and the money needed to keep them would eventually break their keepers. The whole thing started a modern idiom for something so valuable that it cannot be given away, but can only bring eventual ruin to its possessor.

None of this, of course, helps Sam. Or answers his questions.

Why the hell would he be dreaming of a white elephant? One that talks to him in a graveyard for fuck's sake. And for that matter, when did his dreams get all symbolic? Before, it was just glimpses of an inescapable future…now its big pale pachyderms in a boneyard.

Sam slumps back against the wooden shelving, listening to the traffic outside the shop and rubbing one restless thumb over the elephant bead on his wrist.

Elephant bead.

_Peggy._

A blessing and a curse…

Dread pools in Sam's gut.

What does it _mean_…?

**

* * *

AN:** Poor Sam's getting understandably frustrated. As are you guys, I imagine…


	26. Photojournalism

**AN:** OMG PLOT! Like, what the hell man?

**

* * *

Twenty-Six: Photojournalism**

Peggy sits curled on her couch, watching with a faint frown on her pale brow as Dean traces reverent fingers over the old cardboard box that sits in the midst of her living room.

Winchesters don't seem to wear their hearts on their sleeves a great deal from what she's gathered, but she knows they both make an effort not to hide from her (despite that nagging feeling – _why won't you tell me what's wrong…?_).

Dean's heart is on his face right now. He looks so unsure.

"What's up?" she asks, feigning casualty.

He gives her a half smile and does that thing where he rubs the back of his neck.

"I, ah…I don't know if Sam told you…we found a lock up of Dad's recently. Found some stuff there… I brought some of it with me." He tries for a smile. "Thought you might like to help me go through it."

Peggy smiles, big and bold and happy. She knows what this must mean to him, how much trust it's got to take for him to ask her to help him sift through parts of his life, of his father's life.

"Sure," she says, putting down her tea and slipping off the couch. "What can I do?"

He looks down, smile genuine, and unfolds the flaps of box, all cheer and business. Peggy kneels opposite him and watches with gently curious eyes.

"I picked up some albums a while back. We got some photos that were saved from our old house last year, but we never really did anything with them. I found a couple of piles of others in Dad's lock up with some other stuff." He shrugs. "Just figured…be a nice surprise for Sam, y'know?"

Peggy gazes at him. "You're secretly a big softy, aren't you?"

Dean snorts. "Shut up," he tells her, affection leaking into his voice. "Gimme a hand and we'll spread it over the floor; get a good look at it all."

An hour later, the photographs lie in a haphazard fan of light and colour around them. Peggy sits mermaid-style, legs curled to the side and leans against Dean who sits cross legged beside her. Both are barefoot and comfortable rumpled, the ends of their hair lit in matching backlit halos from the sunshine that shafts in through Peggy's floor-to-ceiling windows.

The fan of pictures is a montage of the Winchester's lives and history. There are snapshots of Mary and John after they were married, of Sam and Dean when they were small, growing up, even a few of them as adults, and a handful of Sam at Stanford.

There's one of a man in a trucker's cap sitting on a set of sagging porch steps with a big black dog beside him; this is the first time Peggy sees Bobby Singer. It's also when she sees that Sam and Dean have their mother's eyes, and that Sam has his father's smile.

She sees Jess, her vivacity and brilliance that translates even through the casual photographs, and knows she must have been an amazing girl. It's no wonder that Sam loved someone like her, and was broken so badly by her death.

It makes Peggy wonder about Madison, what kind of person she was, whether she was like Jess. Sam was so hurt when Peggy first met him, so determined not to loss someone else…and losing Maddie had done that to him.

They were both exceptional, she realizes, and feels rather small.

But she sighs and shakes it off, and continues to pick through the lives of her two green-eyed heroes…

"Oh, look at this one," she says later, holding out a picture from the pile she's looking through. "That's you right?"

Dean smiles. "Yeah. I must have been…I dunno…eight, maybe? I think that one was taken at Bobby's."

Peggy has an 'aw' look on her face. "You were so cute!"

Dean scoffs.

"You were!" Peggy insists happily. "I mean, the dimples, and the freckles…the dungarees!"

"What? I was not wearing dungarees!"

Peggy waggles the picture at him, smirking, and he snatches it from her fingers, peering at it with comical intensity.

"Oh my god."

"Yup."

"Dungarees."

"Yup."

"In beige corduroy."

"Uh-huh."

"Son of a bitch."

Peggy turns her face and giggles helplessly into his shoulder.

Dean shakes his head. "Man, what was Dad thinking, putting me in a rig like that? Je-sus."

"I have no idea, but I'm glad he did." Peggy plucks the picture from his hand and puts it firmly down in a pile by her ankle. "This one's going in the 'Copy for Peggy' pile."

The ensuing bickering match is short-lived, and involves Dean chasing Peggy in circles around her living room, Peggy taking refuge atop the dinning table, and Dean frightening Muss so badly the big tomcat knocks the box sideways with a clatter.

A smaller box skids across the floor.

Dean pauses mid-snatch as both he and Peggy look over.

"Is that a tape?"

Dean frowns. "Yeah…"

He helps Peggy down from the table picks up the tape. "VHS."

"Retro," Peggy comments, coming over. "Wanna see what's on it?"

Dean cuts a glance at her. "Well, yeah, I just…"

Peggy raises her eyebrows at him. "I can go out for a bit, if you like. Give you some privacy."

Dean snorts. "Peg, it's not like its porn or anything." He stares at the tape. "Oh god, unless it is…oh great, parental porn." He shudders.

She snickers. "Dork. What I meant was what if it's a video of you and Sam when you were little? I mean, it could have your mum and dad in it…"

Dean's mouth pulls down and one corner and up at the other, conflicted.

"I'll go for a walk," Peggy says gently.

"No. No, its okay, Peg."

She pauses. "You're sure?"

He smiles, looking nervous and sad and pleased all at the same time. "Yeah, I mean…" he laughs a little. "Do you even have tape player?"

Peggy shakes her head. "Nope. But I know someone who will."


	27. Paranoid Lloyd

**Twenty-Seven: Paranoid Lloyd**

It's like something out of a nineties conspiracy movie. Or a Guillermo Del Toro flick. Or _something_ wacky, because even for Dean, this is just off the frigging planet.

The apartment opposite Peggy's is apparently inhabited by a creature known as 'Paranoid Lloyd' and his lair has the understated but completely accurate title of 'The Warren Warren'.

This puzzled Dean, until he discovered that Lloyd Warren is in fact very paranoid and lives in a warren of clutter that mostly seems to be made out of huge stacks of computer servers, both living and dead. Ash would have had a field day in here, in this jungle of blinking lights and looping vine-cables with its man-made canyons of crap and clapped out machinery, filled with a strange blend of up-to-the-minute tech and museum pieces.

Like the video player Peggy is currently wheedling out of Lloyd.

"C'mon, Lloyd, you know me."

He peers suspiciously at her. "Do I? Because there have been advancements in facial duplication that you can only dream of. But I've seen it, man, I've seen it!"

"Really?"

"Yes! You could be an agent of evil in a Peggy suit!"

"How could I prove it's me, Lloyd?"

The little weasel-man hesitates (Dean's not being uncharitable about Lloyd's character; the guy really does have a face like a ferret) and so Dean calls out, "Hey, just show him the Medusa face, Peg."

She scowls at him and he holds his hands up in surrender. "I'm just sayin', Peg-Leg, nobody does it like you."

"The – the Medusa face?" Lloyd asks hesitantly.

Without preamble, Peggy shows him. Dean winces. Lloyd recoils like a singed cat, lurching back in his computer chair, and holds out his spidery hands to shield his face.

"Take it!" he cries, "take it and go! And for the love of God, never do that again!"

Peggy looks awfully guilty as she takes the player and its requisite cords.

"Sorry, Lloyd," she whispers. "I'll make it up to you, promise."

She and Dean beat a hasty retreat.

As they enter her apartment, Dean gives her a speculative look. Peggy eyes him suspiciously.

"Dean, what are you thinking?"

He give her a 'who, me?' look. "Thinking?"

"I can see the cogs in your head ticking over."

He grins. "Just picturing how easy our job would be if we just took you with and pointed you at anyone we had to get information from. They'd fall over themselves to spill their guts." His smile turns dreamy. "I can see it now. We could have the country de-haunted inside a month. Me and Sam could retire! In the Bahamas!"

Peggy gives him an indulgent smile. "You goob. Look, help me plug this beast in, will you? I don't know where all the cable thingies go."

"You complete girl."

"Shut up and make yourself useful."

They bicker and banter for a few minutes, getting the player set up. When it's finally settled, Peggy raises a brow and says, "So, popcorn?"

Dean rolls his eyes.

She turns serious for a moment. "Do you want me to give you some privacy? Honestly, it's not any trouble, Dean, I know what's on the tape could be personal…"

He shakes his head at her. He's not sure why, just some niggling feeling at the back of his mind, but he doesn't want to be alone when he watches this thing.

"Just stick around, Peg, okay?"

She looks at him. Just looks at him, and he's noticed lately, that of the myriad of looks he gets from her, this is actually the one that freaks him out the most. It's one that Sam and Bobby have too; like they're very quietly reading him like a book. Like they know him too well, and know exactly what's going on in that thick skull of his.

Whatever Peggy sees there, she nods her head, gives him a reassuring smile and takes a seat on the futon couch.

"Okay."

"Okay," he echoes, gives her a smile. "Let's fire this puppy up."


	28. Discovery in the Dust

**AN:** Because I know you guys are burning to find out what's on that tape, and I am just burning to tell you. Behold...

**

* * *

Twenty-Eight: Discovery in the Dust**

Looking back, Dean should have known this was coming. He was too happy, and when he's happy, something always – _always_ – goes wrong.

A couple of days ago, he had a massively unpleasant revelation; he realized that some day, he or Sam was going to have to tell Peggy about the Deal. About what had happened at Cold Oak. About Sam…dying.

There are two possibilities here. If he ends up telling her, the scenario he imagines is the rarified one in which he has escaped his Deal and is so elated by this occurrence that he just has to tell her. Knowing Peggy, she'll probably slap him before she hugs him, but whatever. Happily ever after, pie and ice cream, drinks on me, etcetera.

The second is that Sam is the one telling her. And the only way Dean can see that happening is if Dean isn't around to do it himself.

He doesn't like to think about that situation; about the responsibility he's laying on Sam just by dying. He doesn't want to think about the form his brother's grief might take, or how it'll affect Peggy, because one of the worst things he can think of is watching her cry and not being able to fix it. He hates that Sam will have to face that and be rendered helpless by it.

If things go the way he strongly suspects they will…he wants them to be there for each other – more and more, his mind keeps swinging around to that thought; that they'll have each other.

They'll look after each other.

It's a comfort.

But then…then there's that niggling feeling at the back of his mind, and somehow, he knows – knows in his gut – that things are going to change again. A big change, like when Dad died, or when they met Peggy, or that fateful night when he made the Deal…

Something is coming.

He pushes it to the side, shuts it away, and slides the tape into the player. He hits the 'play' button, and settles back on the couch with Peggy. He knows she's watching him out of the corner of her eye, making sure he's okay. It's something she always does, as though she knows, somehow…

On Peggy's TV screen, something strange is unfolding.

It's a home video; blurs of concrete and sundrenched sidewalks, someone laughing and two male voices – one painfully familiar, the other young, male, unknown – talking in a rhythm that Dean recognizes as banter, the same sort he and Sam share.

Then the cameraman gets his act together, the lens swinging upwards.

It's the Impala, parked on an unfamiliar street with his dad riding shotgun and some kid behind the wheel. They're talking, Dad waving one hand at the car's dials, as though giving instructions. The kid's nodding, and then they both smile, sharing some joke.

"How's it going guys?" a female voice calls from off-screen, and he realizes it's the camera_woman_.

The Impala's windows are down so Dean can clearly hear her occupant's answers.

"Pretty good," the teen calls, "I think I got it this time."

"He's fine, Kate," Dad calls, still smiling. "Just hammering out a few kinks. Wanna try again?" he directs the last to the kid, who smiles nervously.

"O-okay…"

"You're fine kiddo; just watch your revs, alright?"

"Dad," the kid tries. "I'm not sure…"

Dean stops breathing. Peggy's hand hesitantly closes on his shoulder. "Dean…?"

"You'll be okay, Adam," the camerawoman calls, "your dad knows what he's talking about."

"Damn straight I do," John says, sounding slightly miffed. "Come on, son, wake her up, let's get this show on the road, huh?"

Dean hits pause, and the frame freezes on Adam's smiling face.

Peggy is shaking her head. "I thought it was just you and Sam," she says quietly. "I didn't know you had a little brother…"

Dean swallows hard, feeling his stomach twist in knots. _No, no, oh God, no…Dad, you bastard…why, why wouldn't you tell us, we had a right to know…_

"Neither did I," he manages, turning to gaze at Peggy, whose face is as white as his must be, eyes wide and shocky. "Peg, I need to call Sam. Right now."

**

* * *

AN2:** I'm so bad. Go on, tell me how bad I am...


	29. Echoes and Silence

**Twenty-Nine: Echoes and Silence**

When Sam hears his brother's voice over the phone, he thinks for one horrible minute that someone has died. In that instant, he prays for everyone he knows, a short but intense litany of names of people he couldn't stand to lose.

"Sam?"

He tenses up, slowly climbing to his feet from where he's been crouched against one of the bookshop's shelves. "Dean, what is it? What's happened?"

His brother heaves a soft sigh, and he sounds so tired. "You need to get home, okay? I'll explain then, but…just come home."

"Is everyone okay?"

"Yeah." There's a pregnant pause. "Yeah, we're okay. C'mon. Get your ass moving, Sam."

He does, and when he gets back with the Impala, it's Peggy who meets him on the landing outside her apartment.

She looks _so_ anxious, and when she catches sight of him, she just reaches up and hugs him tight, burying her face in his chest. Sam hugs her back, but he's starting to freak out a little bit…

"Peggy, what…?"

She pulls back but keeps her hands on his shoulders. "Its okay," she says, all wide blue eyes, "Its okay, it's just going to be a shock. Promise me…promise me you won't go nuts or anything?"

Okay, now he's _really_ freaking out. What the hell is going on?

"Sam?" he hears Dean call from the apartment.

Peggy sighs, takes his hand and leads him inside. Dean's on the couch, head in his hands. Something – an image, a boy's face – is frozen on Peggy's TV.

He sits beside his brother, and cautiously lays one hand on his shoulder. "Dean?"

"Heya Sammy." His brother's voice is low and rasping, as though it hurts to speak.

"Dean, what's happened?"

Dean looks up, and there's that lost, edge-of-the-abyss look on his face.

The thing that frightens Sam about it though is that Dean is smiling.

Sam stares. There's that slipping-out-from-under-his-feet sensation again. Something is so wrong here…

"Just watch the tape, Sam."

* * *

In the aftermath, in the quiet that follows, Sam sits utterly still with his hands clasped between his knees.

Dean hasn't moved at all.

Peggy sits on his other side, clinging to his brother's hand and gazing at Sam with ocean-deep eyes.

Into that breathless quiet, Sam drops the first words.

"We have a brother." He closes his eyes and puts his forehead against his clasped fists. "We have a brother…"

"Adam," Dean says, speaking again for the first time in half an hour. "His name is Adam, and we have no way of finding him."

"Um…"

They both swing around to stare at Peggy.

"Peg-leg?" Dean asks.

She meets their eyes, first Dean's then Sam's.

She's smiling.

"Well, you've met Lloyd."

"Ah, sorry," Sam has to ask, "who's Lloyd?"

"The paranoid lunatic that lives across the hall," Dean explains, without missing a beat or taking his eyes off Peggy.

Sam gives said girl an incredulous look. "You're kidding."

She shakes her head, still smiling. "Did I happen to mention part of the reason that Lloyd thinks the government's out to get him, is that he figured out how to hack the majority of their databases age twelve?"

"Okay," Sam breathes, "you _have_ to be kidding."

Her eyes light up. "Really not, honey. If Kate and Adam are in any government system anywhere Lloyd can find them."

Dean looks like someone's just handed him the world on a plate.

"Sam, go with Peggy and talk to Lloyd. I'll get Dad's journal and look through the rest of the stuff from the lock up."

He turns to look at him and Sam sees an intensity in his brother's face that he hasn't seen for what feels like a long time.

Somehow, this feels like a step away from the abyss. This feels like a step in the better direction.

This feels like a road home.

* * *

**AN:** Originally this was going to be longer (and the final chapter) but it felt like that was betraying the kind of snippety drabble feel of the fic, so I've doing as I've always done and feeding you guys morsels. Plus, more sooner, so not bad, right?


	30. Patience and Grace

**Thirty: Patience and Grace**

Lloyd looks like he's about to wet himself when he catches sight of Sam. Peggy gives the gremlin-man a reassuring smile and takes Sam's hand, as though to demonstrate his harmlessness.

"It's okay, Lloyd, it's just Sam. He's a friend of mine."

"That's what you said about the last guy, and he told you to…to pull that face at me."

"Pull what face?" Sam asks.

Peggy looks awkward. "The Medusa face."

"…oh."

"Yeah. Look, Lloyd, I'll make it up to you, I swear, but right now I just need your help with something."

They are regarded with suspiciously slitted eyes. "What kind of help?" Lloyd hisses.

Hunched over in his computer chair with his lank hair over his shoulders and his spidery-crab hands crouched ready upon his Frankenstein of a PC, the guy reminds Sam of Gollum. He remembered sitting in the cinema with a bunch of other college freshmen, still bursting with their new freedom, and thinking dismally that there was probably some creature out there just like Gollum and that some hunter somewhere would probably find it…

Of course he never expected the creature to be a reclusive computer genius, and certainly never imagined being the hunter to find the…creature.

"We need you to look for someone with your search engine," Peggy's explaining to Lloyd. "Two someone's actually." She hands over the tape. "We don't have a picture of the woman, Kate, but could you find the boy, Adam?"

Lloyd plucks the tape from Peggy's hand and slips it into a player that, through a hopelessly tangled web of blue and black wiring, is connected to the huge computer. His hands are a blur of off-white as they fly over the ultra-modern keyboard. A media player shows up on the screen, and Lloyd begins winding through the tape until Adam's face jumps into focus and freezes.

"Him?"

Sam swallows and nods. "Yeah. Adam."

"Last name?"

"It's not mentioned," Peggy says. "You don't have anything like facial recognition?"

"What do you take me for?" Lloyd asks contemptuously.

"Oh," Peggy says softly.

Lloyd rolls his pale, weasely eyes. "Of _course_ I have facial recognition. This is a crappy picture, but it should do." He turns away and flicks his fingers at them dismissively. "Go away for a while. I have work to do."

Peggy smiles up at Sam, mouthing, "watch this."

She sidles up to Lloyd and gives him a surprise hug. "Thanks, Lloyd. I'll make it up to you I swear."

"You keep saying that…" Lloyd mutters, looking antsy.

"Pavlova sound good?"

Lloyd has frozen. "With kiwifruit?" he asks, all suspicion again.

"With _extra_ kiwifruit."

"Great. Thanks. Uh. Peggy?"

"Yes?"

"Let go of me and go away."

Peggy snickers and lets him go, taking Sam's hand and leading him from the junkland jungle.

"You really think he can find them?" Sam asks when they're on the landing.

Peggy nods. "I do. He may be so far out of his tree he's airborne, but Lloyd's good at what he does. Like, scary-good."

Sam is not reassured. "What if he finds my record when he's looking for Adam? Or Dean's? Peggy, according to the government we're not the most reputable guys to have around…"

"Hey." She takes both his hands and holds his gaze. "What the hell does the government know, huh? I know better, hell, I know _you two_ better. And Lloyd's not about to go tipping anyone off. He's more afraid of the Man than he ever could be of a pair of so-called criminals."

She grins at him. "Besides, how do you think I found your record in the first place?"

Sam stares at her. "You…you…what?"

Peggy shrugs. "I was over there making sure he hadn't starved and asked him for a hand tracking down a couple of friends. Instead of a Facebook page we got an FBI record, but hey…"

Sam is still trying to reclaim his frontal lobe. "I thought you found a wanted notice on the FBI website…"

"That too," Peggy says. "Look, let's go help Dean-o, okay? He shouldn't be by himself right now, even if it is for research."

Back in Peggy's place, Dean is on the floor surrounded by drifts of paper with Dad's journal open beside him and a driven look on his face.

Peggy looks uncertainly up at Sam. He remembers she hasn't really seen this side of his brother, only heard hints of it over the phone when she's played mediator between the two of them.

Dean looks up, catches them with his eyes and demands, "get anything?"

"Lloyd said to give him a while," Sam relays. "The quality wasn't the best."

"But he thinks he can do it?"

"Oh, yeah."

"Good. Wanna grab that pile over there?" he gestures to a heap of paper sitting precariously on the arm of the couch. "I haven't got to it yet."

Peggy grabs it before it tumbles and sets it on the coffee table. "How 'bout I make tea and coffee?" She exchanges a look with Sam. "Sandwiches too, I think. Breakfast was a long time ago."

"Okay," Dean says without looking up from his work, pawing again and again through the journal. "Hey, Sam, look at this…"

Sam offers Peggy a helpless shrug and she nods. One of the things he and Dean share is stubbornness; they're both like a dog with a bone when they get a hold of something they're not willing to let go of, and right now that bone is Adam. Dean won't let go of this until they've found the kid, made sure he's safe, or protected, or something to that effect, and Peggy…

Sam looks up at her where she paces in the kitchen, steadily putting together a small mountain of sandwiches and a pot of coffee for them while she sips her tea. She glances up at him, catching his eyes and smiling one of those rueful smiles.

Peggy understands.

* * *

Half an hour later her laptop chimes and the heads of ever person in the room simultaneously swing towards it.

Peggy gets to her feet, hopping across mounds of paper to her desk and checks the newly received email.

"It's from Lloyd," she confirms, and the Winchester boys come to especial attention.

"He couldn't have just come across the hallway?" Sam attempts to joke.

"With that many mental tics? Good God, no," Peggy murmurs. "Okay, look at this."

She picks up the computer and brings in over to them, setting it on the coffee table. Sam and Dean lean in, peering at the screen.

There's a series of screen captures from a variety of government servers, each one of them for a 'MILLIGAN, Kate'.

"Phone bills, tax records…your boy really went to town, Peggy," Dean comments.

"But wait, there's more," she says, and brings up another capture.

It's of a website, the events page it looks like, for a high school in Windom, Minnesota. There's an article on a recent science fair and top prize going to Adam Milligan, who of course has won a conditional scholarship to Wisconsin U to study medicine there. The kid in the picture has grown since the video was made – filled out a little more around the shoulders, jaw gotten longer, eyes more serious. He's still a kid though, just seventeen. Happy, oblivious… and frighteningly vulnerable.

"Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner," Sam says.

"And a destination," Dean says. "Minnesota…its long drive."

"Um, shyeah," Peggy scoffs. "If by long you mean 'diagonally across the freaking country.' It'll take at least a week. Dean," she adds firmly, "you are not starting tonight."

"But –"

"But fucking nothing," the girl growls. "You're both over-tired and wired up on coffee, liable to speed without realizing and kill Sam, yourself, and the Impala. You're having dinner, staying the night and setting out in the morning."

Dean stares at her. "Yes, ma'am."

"Damn skippy," says Peggy, getting her feet and going off to crash about in the kitchen.

"What was that all about?" Dean breathes to Sam.

"Well, she's got a point."

"Yeah, but…"

Sam shrugs. "She's worried about you. About us."

He glances over at her where she stands at the bench, back to them as she ties on her apron and pulls vegetable knives out of the knife block and a wooden chopping board from under the sink.

"I think she's been worried for a while."

**

* * *

AN:** Last chapter is on its way, I promise. In the meantime, review, review, review.


	31. The Road Rises Up to Meet You

**AN:** You're going to have to forgive me but...EPIC, EPIC SIGH. Okay. I'm good. Carry on.

**

* * *

Thirty-One: The Road Rises Up to Meet You**

Dinner's a rather sober affair tonight. They eat clustered comfortably on Peggy's couch, or rather, she and Dean do. Sam's comfortably sprawled on a beanbag chair, plate neatly balanced on one curved knee.

The three of them watch the news and _Friends_ reruns, the odd video clip on one of the music channels (Dean makes faces), part of a documentary on the _Lord of the Rings_ movies ("Camped there," Peggy says, "did a horse trek there…and that's just outside of Hamilton."), anything that's on, really.

After this afternoon's furious activity, the subject of the Milligans has suddenly become the elephant in the room – and that particular thought has Sam fingering the bead bound securely at his wrist, the pad of his thumb rapidly becoming familiar with the shape of it.

He wonders if he'll dream tonight, their last night here, he thinks painfully, and then hopes that he will because in some ways the elephant dream is a constant…a puzzle, but a steady one. Unlike the desperate scrabble to unravel the seams of Dean's Deal, the white elephant holds no threat, or doesn't feel like it does. It's just a mystery that buzzes under his skin like flowing words, walking along his nerves to his fingertips.

They find a movie playing – _Jurassic Park_, of all things – and settle in. Dean, exhausted but trying to hide it, as always, is the first to drop off, right around the scene were the fat guy gets ganked by the little spitting dinosaurs.

Peggy tugs Sam's sleeve, and the two of them silently go about nudging Dean into lying down the couch, Peggy putting a pillow under his head while Sam finds a blanket in the linen chest-cum-coffee table and spreads it over his brother's sleeping form.

That done, they turn down the TV and Sam settles back into his beanbag, thinking Peggy will take one of the two armchairs. To his surprise, she instead curls up bedside him on the beanbag, and fits comfortably under his arm, head resting with a sigh on his shoulder.

"'m gonna miss you guys when you go," she murmurs, one hand curled loosely on his chest. Beneath her fingers is Sam's warding tattoo. Sam thinks of Peggy's own ink, of how each part was given to her, and that maybe it's time it was added to, that the next section can be from him and can be something that will protect her forever from the horrible things they both know are out there. It isn't much, he _knows_ this, but it's _something_…

"Its not like we're going forever," Sam murmurs back.

She shakes her head a little, pressing her face to his shoulder so that when she speaks her voice is a little muffled. "You can't promise something like that," she reminds him, and he hears his own words in hers, that seemingly long-ago conversation when she'd given him his writing journal.

He puts his face against her hair and wraps both arms around her. "I know. I know, but I can be careful, and I can look out for Dean like he does for me, and I can call you so you can keep us in line and make sure that we don't always eat crap and that Dean doesn't drive tired and that I don't go slowly insane by forgetting to make notes or use my journal…"

"And that Dean occasionally listens to music that was released after we were born."

Sam laughs low against her hair, feels her smile against his shoulder.

"Yeah…"

They watch the rest of _Jurassic Park_, and Peggy's the next one to drop off, dozing against Sam and sighing in her sleep. Sam turns the TV off as the credits roll, and carries her to bed.

Later, he does dream, standing in the yellow field the white elephant, his palm resting patiently against its smooth/rough face and smiling until he wakes…

* * *

The car is packed, breakfast was eaten half an hour ago, lunch is sitting in a cooler in the Impala's back seat.

They're ready.

Sam doesn't want to go.

Adam is waiting unaware in Windom, but Sam…Sam is watching Peggy through the car's back window as he pulls the trunk lid down and she sits beside Dean in his spot on the Impala's front bench seat, both of them laughing at some of the stuff that they've turned up in Dean's shoebox of mullet rock.

Its déjà vu. It's the front of the studio all over again, leaving LA that first time. Its like, the moment he catches that little scene – the cassette tapes, his brother's incredulous smile, Peggy's laugh – all of a sudden he's back there, even the sunlight is the same, and fixed to his rails he begins to replay those little events.

When he comes around the side of the car, Peggy spots him first and gives him that knowing, sad smile of hers.

"Bye, Dean-a-saur," she says, leaning over the shoebox and hugging Dean.

He hugs her back and mumbles, "bye, Peg-leg," into her shoulder.

Then she turns to Sam, shading her eyes as she climbs from the car. Sam, unable to help himself, takes her hand. To his horror, Peggy looks like she's tearing up.

"You'll come back," she tells him, voice soft but assured. "You have to, because it's my birthday next month, and you totally owe me a present."

He smiles and puts his forehead against hers. "We owe you more than that. Peggy…"

"If this turns into some soppy goodbye spiel, Winchester, I will so slap you."

It startles a laugh out of him, and Peggy smiles. "Just…don't be strangers, okay?"

"I think that's a promise I can keep," Sam tells her, and when he looks at her…oh, hell…all noble thoughts just go out the freaking window.

He leans down, and he kisses her, and…this is not like last time. This is not chaste, it's not quick, she's got one hand in his hair, and all Sam can smell is sunlight and skin and nectarines.

The sound of the car rumbling to life brings them back to themselves.

"Peg…"

"Go," she breathes against his mouth, and he doesn't want to…but he does anyway.

THE END

…OR YOU KNOW, 'THE END…UNTIL THE SEQUEL'

**

* * *

AN:** Yeah, I totally went there. I am the biggest freaking sap ALIVE. I completely blame Melody Gardot (_Our Love is Easy_), who turns my brain to syrup every time she pops up on my playlist, goddamn it. Anyway, there _will_ be a sequel, because **God** and **BranchSuper** and **my brain** commanded it, so look out for _Pas De Tois_. I'm having a bit of moment, because, wow...I actually finished a fic. _Bastille Day_ is finished. Wacky.

So, how do **you guys** feel about it?


End file.
